Seth, I disagree in that it doesn't have to be an "either/or" case. Your argument is strictly for funding and policy priorities in your own lifetime, or a few decades beyond. Both need to be included in the exploration of the solar system-at-large, perhaps with a timescale of scores of years, not a couple of decades. Meaningful, large-scale lunar exploration, colonization, resource management, etc., will represent a huge monetary investment, one that will in a relatively short amount of time pretty much dwarf single manned missions to Mars. On Jan 2, 2008 1:16 PM, Seth Jarvis <SJarvis@slco.org> wrote:
So what's _really_ intriguing then becomes this question: Which world is the logical stepping stone for further exploration of the solar system - the Moon or Mars? I think the answer has to be the Moon.