NASA seems hell bent to go to Mars, but can't afford to on its own.
Its international partners have no stomach for that — they would would rather return to our moon and build a base there for further exploration.
Doesn't going back to the moon make more sense? Build a base on the moon, and use its low gravity and possible water at the poles as propellant for further space exploration?
Why not the moon first?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/7/11868840/moon-return-journey-to-mars-nasa-congress-space-policy
Links:
From NASA itself, in 2008: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/series/moon/why_go_back.html
The all-knowing, ever-trustworthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday June 08 2016, @04:41PM
In eighty years, two hundred years and a thousand years, how will history remember Elon Musk, if at all?
The man who claimed the right of Prima Nocta over Mars. If we get life extension soon enough his reign might last as long as the Babylonian god-kings of old!