Not to mention that idiotic "Space Treaty" which we foolishly signed off on. "Common good of all Mankind" my left foot. Very few folks in this group called "mankind" has anyone else's "common good" on their minds. Especially when it comes to keeping the rest of us under control.
Ask yourself this, would a Privately run venture really pay thousands for a toilet seats or hundreds for a standard hammer? How about spending a couple billion on an orbital tinker-toy set with no real economic focus?
Privatize it. We'll have hotels on the Moon within a decade.
I agree, the "space treaty" serves only to slow us down. Other nations will use it for toilet paper if it helps them out.
The costs you mention are a bit of a red-herring. They are the product of both over-specification of requirements by the government, and the paperwork it takes to ensure that the equipment meets requirements. Part of this is trying to eliminate risk in what is still a test program. Moving this back to the military using military "test pilots" instead of civilians could mitigate some of the costs.
I disagree that we would have any moon tourism within a decade. The economics are not there yet. Even with a bare-bones project and accepting higher risk, it is still too expensive to send people to the moon as tourists.