Sure glad you folks aren't planning the Mars missions... nice to have opinions, but your wrong about costs, you're wrong about ISS, you're wrong about a lunar base. You're just ... wrong.
In just 12 years, the human race went from being an Earth-bound technology to landing a human on the Moon. Technology has advanced manyfold in the intervening 40 years. We shouldn't need a space station and a lunar base to get to and inhabit Mars.
That's it? If that's all, we'll be wrong all the way to Alpha Centauri.