President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond

Totally agree. The only way to go seriously for manned exploration as far as
I'm concerned is (robotic) colonization of the moon first, then set up a
manned base there, then build big fat 500 tons ships using local materials
and go off wasting time investigating why Mars is the dead piece of space
waste it is... :)
Ho, and once you have removed the annoying lift-offs from Earth you could
use nuclear propulsion at will, and then you may as well need something like
liquid-filled inertia-dumpers cells of some kind as the only thing that
would stop you to go to Mars in a week is the acceleration that the crew
could stand! But you could take it easy and accelerate (or decelerate) just
fast enough to keep at a good old 1 g, and forget about the effects of
zero-g... as a matter of fact you could push it a bit, say 1.2g and get the
crew back more fit than when they left...
Dreaming? Could be done within a decade or two if we stopped spending money
fighting for supremacy and start put it in it now, but then THAT's
dreaming... :)
Dream for dream, I'm still a lot more interested in a robot digging dirt on
the moon by the ton than a man (healthy or otherwise) drilling an inch hole
in a rock on Mars... :P
But then, reality being what it is, I guess we're going to shoot some poor
bastard in a tin can hoping he makes it back, as usually... ho well...