[Buckeye Bomber]

Exactly. Once they go to the moon, you'll see the American flag on the Mars in no time. We don't believe in just matching Communists. We leapfrog over them.

[Wavyhill]

Seriously, that would not be the best strategy. The main purpose for going to the Moon is not for vanity. It's to establish a colony to provide raw materials for space industry, which can also be used to supply military space stations to be used against the Chinese. There are two problems with using Mars as a source of raw materials.

First, Mars is almost a years' journey away by the least fuel-expensive orbit. This is only a short-term problem, however, if we can eventually have continuous flights from Mars to the space stations.

Second, and more importantly, Mars has much higher gravity than the Moon, so the energy cost is far more to get raw materials out of the gravitational "hole" into orbit--although it's still less costly than the current plan of lifting stuff from Earth.

Now, the asteroids would be preferable to either as a source of raw materials--but they may be too far away for the limited imaginations of Congressmen or NASA bureaucrats.

[Enemy Of The State]

only trouble is that China has been studying our methods of dealing with Communist countries in order to avoid ending up like the rest. Washington needs to seriously rethink its dealings with China and call them out for the trouble makers they are. Decrease trade with the slimy weasles and it will effectively cut off the funding for their military as well as their "space program"