Should we go to the moon or should we go to
Mars?
We should go to both.
But I guess the real question is where do
we go next?
What’s the next step?
And I think this goes back to the orbital
perspective as well.
I think the orbital perspective, you know,
the part of the orbital perspective that talks
about long term planning.
You know let’s look 20, 30, 40, 50 years
down the road and see what affects our decisions
that we make today will take us, you know,
what trajectory will that put us on?
Where will that get us in that timeframe?
And so if we go to Mars first which we can
do.
I’d say it would probably be 10 to 15 years
from the time we make a decision to go to
Mars we could probably get to Mars.
But by making a decision that means we’ve
allocated the necessary funding, et cetera,
et cetera.
But another path to Mars would be to go to
the moon first.
And by going to the moon first – and what
I mean by that is by establishing a transportation
infrastructure between the Earth and the moon
and a permanent human presence on the moon.
So we have routine travel between Earth and
its nearest neighbor.
By doing that that would open up the entire
solar system.
That enables us to use the resources that
are on the moon.
It enables us to launch in a much lower gravity
field than Earth.
It opens up tremendous benefits to the entire
population of the Earth by making use of our
nearest neighbor.
There’s energy on the moon.
There’s scientific discoveries on the moon.
The list goes on and on all the benefits to
Earth that the moon provides.
And so not only would we get those benefits.
Not only would we be able to have this traffic
infrastructure for routine travel to the Earth
and the moon but we’d open up the rest of
the solar system including Mars.
So to me from a long term point of view it
makes sense to have the next step being to
return to the noon, this time to stay.
