NASA should prioritize space colonization over puexploration

IMO, the International Space Station is a mission to nowhere. And I
believe the Constellation program is just a repeat of the Apollo
program. The excitement of the Apollo 11 moon landing quickly faded
with the congress and the public because it was essentially a space
spectacular program instead of a pioneering program for human
expansion off the planet.

NASA, IMO, needs to shift its priorities from space exploration for an
elite few and towards space colonization and industrialization program
by building a mostly reusable space transportation infrastructure and
permanently manned and continuously growing facilities in space and on
the Moon and Mars through the exploitation of extraterrestrial
resources on the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids.

So I'm all for building the Ares V heavy lift vehicle as soon as
possible. We desperately need a heavy lift vehicle.

But I'm against the Ares 1 and prefer building a reusable VTOVL Delta
Clipper as a people shuttle that could be launched from anywhere in
the country and would be attractive to private industry for human
space launches and space tourism. This same VTOVL could also be used
as a Mars lander and hydrogen tanker from the Martian surface to Mars
orbit.

With the Ares V, we could launch Skylab-like manned habitats (or even
cabled rotational habitats to provide artificial gravity) into Earth
and Lunar orbit along with massive water tankers, oxygen tankers, and
hydrogen tankers for long term survival and transportation fuel needs.

The lunar lander should also be reusable, IMO, expendable as NASA
proposes. That would mean giving such a vehicle the capability of
refueling on the lunar surface and from orbiting space tankers. We
should also have a small reusable OTV for people transport between
lunar and Earth orbit. Reusable vehicles of course require maintenance
which means we'd have to have a lot more mechanical engineers in
orbital habitats and on the surface of the Moon and Mars which I
think is a good thing as long as people are mostly living off the
resources of the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids.

If we built huge Drexler type light sails in lunar orbit, this would
provide us with a reusable vehicle that would weigh less than 50
tonnes yet could transport several hundred tonnes of people and
payload rapidly to Mars orbit in just a few months. And these aluminum
sails would require very little maintenance.

Using the Ares V to send base facilities to the lunar surface where
humans could exploit the oxygen in the soil for survival. Similar
bases on Mars could exploit Martian ice and send needed hydrogen to
the moon. But we need to know if lots of people can truly survive in
extraterrestrial environments with little or no resources from Earth.
And we also need to find out if we can utilize the resources in these
environment to gradually expand the size of this habitats.

This may sound a lot more expensive than our current space program or
the Constellation program, but without the space shuttle program and
by turning over the ISS program to Russia, Japan, and Europe, I
seriously think it could done with only a slight increase in the
current NASA budget. And I think Americans would be a lot more
interested in a program of gradual colonization of the New Frontier
rather than one that has an elite few just visiting these worlds and
then returning to brag about their expensive adventure.