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Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap.

If we don't do it, somebody else will. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do.

There is more He-3 energy on the Moon than we have ever had in the form of fossil fuels on Earth. All we have to do is to go there and get it.

To deliver vast new resources to humanity, we must pioneer and occupy the moon, Mars, and perhaps even beyond.

We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own.

If NASA is to reach beyond the Moon and someday reach Mars, it must be relieved of the burden of launching people and cargo to low earth orbit. To do that, we must invest more in commercial spaceflight.

You wouldn't want to land on the Moon and launch to Mars. That would be very inefficient.

I don't think there is much value in trying to use the moon as a base to go to Mars. That's going into one gravity belt and having to get back out of it again. And the moon doesn't have a lot to offer as a resource base.

But I don't think we'll go there until we go back to the moon and develop a technology base for living and working and transporting ourselves through space.