20 million to this guy is exactly 5 months worth of interest income to him. If you were his age, retired and rich, would you shell out 5 months dividend payments to go into space? I would.
Shows how dumb NASA is? Quite to the contrary, crazy like a fox. They don't want him in space because it opens the doors to the entrepenuers. Just like the Democrats don't want private Social Security accounts because it generates competition for their business (controll of your money), so too does NASA want to eliminate any competition in the private sector for access to space.
It costs NASA $2000 per pound to deliver payloads into space. Assuming he weighs 200 lbs., it costs Russia $400,000 to get him up there, or a profit of $19,600,000. NASA could send people up there in droves for a million and make much more money than what Defense, CIA, or Lorall pay them. They just don't want to lose their monopoly.