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Let's not spend resources that we don't need to be sending astronauts back to the moon. Let's not spend expensive resources on bringing people who have reached Mars back again. Prepare them to become a growing colony.

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.

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.

Well, I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.

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

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It's too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.

My view is that we should go back to the moon, build up the infrastructure to make flights there commonplace - be comfortable with it - then use that infrastructure to expand and go to Mars.

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.