I say all 3 with NASA taking the smallest role and private industry doing the heavy lifting.
The path between major contractors, global finance and trillions in government spending, leading back ultimately to the taxpaying “little people”.
Tyrannical government will drive freedom minded people to the stars the same way it drove people across an ocean...
It would take less fuel and has a potential huge pay off with helium 3.... or so I have heard.
At the rate things are going the first people to land on Mars will be the Liechtensteinians!
Cultivating an exceptionally strong friendship with the Chinese. Maybe they will let some of us tag along.
Advertise it as a massive "red state". The liberals will move there in droves to foul the nest.
Let’s see, generational welfare, Islamic democracy, global warming, and countless other ill conceived government programs have cost our country trillions for absolutely no gain. We could have colonized the solar system or at least Mars and the moon.
Never mind Mars, that Chelyabinsk meteor was the wakeup call of the millennium. We need to push our representatives to take that puppy seriously. Hysterical blindness absolutely will not do.
Desperation. To do the next right thing.
Who cares about the dorks on Mars? Why don’t anybody show us how to get to Venus where the chicks are?
How about a Mission to transport all of the followers of a certain 7th Century Lunar Deity to their beloved home planet, ie: the Moon.
This would satisfy the current NASA objective as well as pay homage to the Greatest Achievement in Human History...ie: Putting A Man on the Moon./s