Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

Only a fool keeps all of his eggs in one basket (the Earth), but that being said, the primary purpose of putting Man into space is not for insurance, but simply to put Man into space so that he can explore and, in some cases, colonize other worlds. With a nearly infinite number of worlds in the cosmos, only someone very limited in his thinking would be against gearing up to go explore our surroundings.

But to a large extent we've already explored our immediate neighborhood. It's not like we don't know what the conditions are like on Venus or the Moon, or Mars. And we don't currently have the ability to send probes anywhere beyond the Solar System.

Lord a few man visits to the moon and a few robot missions to a few of the solar system planets and we know about them?

Mars surface area is larger then the earth area that is above sea level for example.

What I'm saying is that we need to become a spacefaring civilization, and the way to do that is to practice travelling to and developing colonies on more and more distant destinations. The way to eventually be able to send humans to other solar systems is to begin to develop the ability to go to and live on places we can already reach. We should start by developing a colony on the Moon, and continue with Mars, the Lagrange points, mining asteroids, etc. The goal of putting people into space is to get good at it so that eventually we can put more people further into space.

Sure, but we haven't found anything that compels us to visit, have we?

So you need to find an economic justification. Why did Europe settle the New World? Money.

I don't need to find economic justification (although it doesn't hurt either). Tens of thousands of years ago, when the human race was confined to one little area of Africa and some caveman suggested that they look over the next hill to see what was there and was told that it was a foolish idea, what would have been an economic justification for him to present? This is bigger than money or ec0nomics. Man should explore and settle the stars, or at least as many as he can get to, and we cannot succeed in that unless we begin trying.

I suspect the reason was, "let's find something to eat", which is a pretty strong economic incentive.

H3= Justification.

I suspect that something like my story happened a few times before and during Man's expansion on the Earth, but even if it didn't, it can serve as a hypothetical to illustrate my point.

I bet something like my story happened a hell of a lot more often than yours.

Edit: And what kind of debate points are you providing? First you claim historical imperative, then when you can't back it up you say, "it's just a hypothetical but it proves my point anyway."

It doesn't prove your point at all, actually.

And let me clarify that I'm not anti-manned space exploration. I just think we need to do it for the right reasons, so that we can sustain it.

I would love to see our heavy industry moved to the Moon. (I think that microgravity is too damned inconvenient for manufacturing.)

Why is exploring the universe not the right reasons? In my opinion, it's important to do that for its own sake. It doesn't have to show an immediate dollar profit.

Exploration for its own sake is fine, if you can find someone to pay for it. Let me know when you put that together.

There was a cartoon showing 2 cavemen looking at another one rolling by on a crude wood platform with 2 axles and 4 stone wheels, where one caveman says to another: "Yeah and how many of us will lose our jobs carrying heavy loads if that wheel contraption catches on?" Some things never change.

listening to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson last night on Coast to Coast AM, he thinks Nasa should go back to the Moon, just to prove they can do it, get a few week long trips to the moon under their belt before trying a much longer mission to Mars

even better, given the economic strains of space exploration, keep up the rover projects, he figures we could send about 50 rover projects for the price of one manned mission

Rovers are nice and can find useful information however they are worth about 1/50 compare to having humans on site.

I'd go along with this. A very strong example of this is humans living in the periglacial regions at the time of the ice ages. The frigid winds off the mile thick glaciers capping the northern regions made forests, other than gallery forests in sheltered river valleys, almost non-existent. Instead of the vast forests which would be found a few thousand years ago in the Ukraine, central Asia and central and western Europe, there were vast grasslands that supported literally billions of grazing animals. Different species used different types of grass, so that virtually every niche was filled with what were to man, excellent game animals. The heavy furs and hides, along with the large amounts of stored fats, more than made up for the additional energy--work--required to survive in those regions. Even a moderately competent hunter-gatherer group need not have gone hungry.

And, exposure to the harsh winters of the periglacial regions required of humans the development of technologies which stood us in good stead in the palmy "salad days" of ten and twelve thousand years ago when the domestication of plants and animals took place.

Columbus only got financed for his second and subsequent voyages because he brought back gold from his first voyage. Vasco da Gama lost all but one of his original five ships, and the survivor not the largest, but the cargo he brought back from India paid the cost of the entire enterprise 15 times over.

We've discussed all of this again and again.

And how many decades was it before Jame Town begin to show a profit?

That would be a good thing for the government to do.