If you’re going out to the asteroid belt, might as well go all the way to Mars. Make it a two-fer. Drop the Muzzie astronauts on the asteroid and tell them we’ll pick them up on the way back.
Yeah, especially since Mars is closer than the asteroid belt. The asteroids are beyond mars, between mars and jupiter. This obsession obama has with landing on an asteroid indicates a mind formed by bad hollywood fiction.
Depending on the time of year, Mars is closer.
Or we can even do both by going to Phobos/Deimos, the asteroid sized moons of Mars. Set up a base there for future landing on the surface.
Actually, I support this kind of mission, because processing asteroids into useful space materials is a necessary next step in colonization. And technically we already have landed a probe on an asteroid, around 1999/2000.