On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:14:34 -0500, Marvin the Martian wrote:

You can't live on Venus... Too hot. It doesn't rotate like Earth, and
the pressure is too great. Venus is pretty much a pipe dream. Mars would
be much easier to colonize.

The last part, about moving the moon, that's gibberish.

So, anyway, plans to land on Venus are a joke, like landing on the sun.

We can get to Mars easier than we can get to the moon. Energy wise, it
takes less energy to go to the surface of mars than to go to the surface
of the moon, by far. This means you can put more mass on Mars than the
moon if using the same rocket.

Anything beyond Mars cost too much energy to reach from Earth.

Mars, unlike the moon, has carbon and water. Now, it sounds like a joke,
but a carbon based life form made mostly of water would be utterly stupid
to try and colonize a rock like our moon which has no carbon and very
little water. You'd think a life form that can develop rockets would
realize this. No... it appears it isn't understood.

Mars has a 24.5 hour day, almost perfect for Earth based life forms. The
moon? Forget it! You're in the dark 2 weeks at a time. You're not setting
up greenhouses on the moon.

So, if you want a space outpost, Mars is it! A mars colony would have
easy access to the asteroids for mining, which could more than pay for a
Mars colony. Mars would be the gateway to Jupiter and its moons. It is
actually possible to build a space elevator out of common Kevlar on Mars,
thus one day, space access from Mars would be incredibly cheap.

Mars has the science as well: it is so like Earth, it may have had life
on it. Recent methane releases hint strongly at life. It would greatly
advance biological science if we could study Mars life.