Justin does not agree. This response almost deserves a whole post all on its own, and maybe I'll write one, but I'll put it here too.

First, Slate does a pretty good job bashing half of the reasons NASA put on its "Why the Moon?" poster- I'm not sold on the global cooperation or the economic opportunities. Preparing for wider colonization also seems a little premature. However, the other three reasons NASA cites are, even without the others, reason enough to go to the Moon and build an outpost.

First, the author wants to do the exploration with robots. Sure, they're useful, but they are not always the best way to advance our knowledge. I'd say keeping scientists out of the field is the #1 way to avoid making a big discovery. Apollo 17 carried a professionally training geologist, as opposed to the fighter jocks that walked on the Moon on the other missions, and that mission produced some of the more valuable information of the Apollo program. Humans also bring a certain felxibility and adaptability to the field. Robotic explorers are limited by the instruments that they carry on their backs, while astronauts based at an outpost can easily switch between many more modes of analysis and study, as their instrumentation is built up over multiple shipments of supplies from Earth. Although some advances are being made in robots that can sense their own condition and compensate for damage, I'd trust an astronaut with medical training to do a better job of fixing broken astronauts than a robot to fix itself or be fixed by another robot. I'd also rather have an astronaut fix a broken robot. So more science can be done quickly (the Mars rovers drive very slowly, taking months to traverse rather small areas) by sending people, and we'll also satisfy NASA's theme of public engagement with a manned base- people will care more if a human looks at a rock on the Moon instead of a robot.

But my biggest beef comes with Slate saying that a Lunar outpost is going to be used directly along the way to a mission to Mars. NASA, and their poster, never make such claims. To twist Slate's words, this argument makes absolutely no sense, and the fact that Slate journalists get away with telling gullible people that a Mars mission would use a Moon base as a pit stop along the way shows how science illiteracy has creeped into Slate's writing.

Here's getting to Mars in a nutshell- it's far away, so we have to send our craft into a Sun-centered orbit and meet Mars in its orbit about 6 to 7 months after lift-off from Earth. By the way, living on the space station for 6 months at a time is great preparation for this interplanetary trip. Then you land on Mars, and you have to wait for Earth and Mars to reach appropriate places in their orbit to allow for you to meet Earth in its orbit 6 tp 7 months after blasting off of the surface of Mars- that wait is about 18 months.

So, by building a lunar outpost that is only 3 days from Earth, we get a chance to practice keeping a crew alive on the surface of another world and work out all the kinks before sending a crew on their way to Mars and guaranteeing that they'll be away from Earth for up to 3 years. The first Mars crew will need to have the luxury of well tested equipment and a well-developed knowledge base on survival becasue they will not have the luxury of quickly returning to Earth should a problem arise. A Lunar outpost is not a direct requirement to launch a crew to Mars, Slate's right about that, but even if I was asked, I would not even consider being on that first Mars mission knowing that nobody had ever tried to live on the surface of another world for an extended period of time. The Lunar outpost, then, is a proving ground for keeping a crew alive on Mars. Maybe the crew on the Moon will have to spend most of their time just keeping themselves alive (although NASA is planning to use robots for some of the construction and maintenence of the base, freeing up some man-hours for exploration) but even if that's the case, it will be time well spent. The Lunar outpost is a stepping stone on the way to Mars, but only figuratively, not literally, as Slate says. For this, I won't raise my middle finger at Slate, but I will wag a disapproving index finger.