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Should our next crewed landings be on Mars or the Moon?
Guest posted a topic in Science & Spaceflight
With so much talk going on about SpaceX planning to colonize Mars and NASA planning to go to back the Moon, I've gotten thinking about some things - which one should we really put our bets in? I'm somewhat biased towards going to the Moon by now, but it just seems logical to me: it's waay closer to Earth (2-3 days of space travel compared to 3-9 months), we've already got a bit of experience sending people there (we know what the dangers are), weaker gravity (easier to land on, launch from and build on), no atmosphere, there's areas with permanent sunlight (and lack thereof), the use of its Far Side to place radio telescopes with very little interference, not to mention the potential for mining (helium-3, iron, aluminium) and the confirmed presence of water. Mars, on the other hand, what advantages does it have? Most of the arguments for colonizing it I see can be reduced to "for the sake of it" (we don't exactly have the need to be an interplanetary species "to guarantee our future", it may even be more dangerous to be such thing, as off-Earth people may claim independence from Earth; colonies on the Moon are just as equally "interplanetary" as colonies on Mars; there doesn't seem to be any economic reason to, for instance mining on Mars and sending materials back to Earth is more challenging than doing so on the Moon - you're just sending people there because you can) It feels like that old fan-made KSP video, "Evacuate Kerbin!", where everyone is somehow convinced they should evacuate to Tylo, even though Laythe would obviously be a better option. Any thoughts on this?