Hello,

Should humanity make a substantial effort towards Mars or the Moon? I have an answer, but I am curious about how people feel toward space progress.

Plot twist: The moon is not actually made of cheese.

Neither should be the end goal.

They are stepping stones along a path to eventual interstellar travel.

To that end, more research toward permanent space dwellings like space stations, and also toward colonization biospheres on both the moon and Mars, particularly as Mars is within the habitable zone. (It's also the only planet we know of populated entirely by robots, so there's that too.)

Depends on whether it will take longer to terraform the moon, or travel to mars.

I see no one trying to go back to the moon ... instead all I see is trillions of $$ wasted sending robots to other planets and the occasional comet.

Why doesn't any government in the world fund experimental colonization projects ?

The reason we do robot probes is because cost:benefit ratio of a robotic mission FAR outweighs human missions; the probes on Mars alone have more than made up for the investment. Humans, on the other hand, are soft, squishy, require a lot of resources and currently we don't even know how long we'd survive outside of the protection of the earth's magnetic field and the impact of it (because nothing hurts quite like a nice dose of high energy radiation) and we are still assessing long term microgravity issues on the human body and how to overcome them.

Without the existing missions, which are far from a waste, the data being gathered by them will help in that regard as well as answer questions about the solar system, planet formation and other big questions.

As for future plans, Mars is the current 'long term' goal however we need to go in stages because we still don't really have the tech to get humans there and do useful work (getting people back seems to be a minor consideration); the moon is the next target, although that isn't a landing mission and is part of the journey to mars. NASA's Asteroid Initiative is a plan to capture an asteroid, bring it back to the moon and park it in orbit so that missions to it can be carried out to test out new equipment in a (relatively) safe environment.

This technology, while providing a platform for the Mars missions, is also likely a stepping stone towards space industry and the capture and mining of asteroids and fabrication of components in space (the ISS has a 3D printer onboard which is another stepping stone) which is going to be vital for any longer term space exploration and off-world bases - we could do a hell of a lot more if we didn't need to constantly throw objects off our planet to go and look at stuff instead of just giving them a shove.

Ultimately, if the human race is to survive we need to figure out how to get to planets outside of this solar system - getting off Earth is a start but anything on the moon and mars is going to depend on earth for some time so it still won't ensure the survival of our species and all it would take is a single dense object coming near the solar system to wipe everything out even before we get to the minor issue of the sun eating everything we can live on.

In short, it isn't a case of 'here a goal' because every goal is a stepping stone to something greater; moon, mars, other systems... all stepping stones.

I see no one trying to go back to the moon ... instead all I see is trillions of $$ wasted sending robots to other planets and the occasional comet.

Why doesn't any government in the world fund experimental colonization projects ?

There's no economic reason (so far whatever we might possibly want that's on either planet would cost more than it would be worth to bring back) nor is there a strategic reason (the US setting up a permanent base on the moon isn't going to lead to an advantage over the Chinese, Russians, etc. other than bragging rights). Governments don't think in terms of survival of the species or scientific curiosity (for the most part) unless they absolutely have to. My guess is that it's going to take either overpopulation or something really shiny on those planets to get that sort of funding going.

Building up on the moon is an important step to going to Mars in my view. Establishing bases there will be important for technological testing (Better that something fails when people are days away from earth, rather than months.) and possibly as a fabrication and launch facility. (While doing complex assembly of projects in orbit is possible, there are some strong arguments for doing it in a low-g environment rather than a zero-g environment. Far easier to deal with errors is equipment faults in a low-g environment, as stuff tends to fall to the ground rather than just changing orbital plane.)

Not to mention material processing. It is my understanding that there are several very viable mining and refining opportunities up there that could greatly lessen the LEO launch load for a Mars mission. And rail launch is also a viable option off the moon, which may greatly reduce the need for reaction-mass transfers for such a launch. (The more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need. But if you can replace part of that with what is basically a meglev train that goes no where? Well then you can potentially use all that construction for thousands of high mass launches instead of a handful.)

There is a lot mankind can be doing on earth for a relatively cheap price ...

We could revive the old biodome project so that we can learn to build substitutable environments ( and food ) in space .

We could work on improving biological Co2 scrubbers so that we can have renewable oxygen in space .

We could work on having lighter weight radiation suits than we do now .

We could work on various artificial gravity theories .

We could work on non-explosive propulsion out of earth's atmosphere .

There is so much humans COULD before going back into space .

I remember reading an article that stipulated that the moon, unlike previous accounts, was actually drifting AWAY from the earth, making it very hard to predict where its orbit will adjust once it leaves the earth. For all we know, it could crash into the sun... not anytime soon, but you have to bear that in mind.

Based on intrinsic resources available on either of these, I would go with Mars. It feels like its size and semblance of atmosphere could minimize the amount of work required in order to establish a base of operations.

It is probably also the place that still has the most left untapped potential.

The obvious drawback is the distance, which keeps on begging the question of how to make space travel any faster. With Alcubierre Drive back up as a possible solution (not really Alcubierre, but a system derived from the same concept), it sounds like Mars may not be all that far off, but reasonably so, neither would the Moon.

Personally though, I would not focus on either. There are several planets that have been identified as having atmospheres much closer to Earth's and could potentially have lifeform signs. I would be tempted to focus on the current Drive research projects and send probes to these distant systems in a hope to find a better "Draft of a planet" to start from.