h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On 15 Dec 2004 02:09:11 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Tom"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

I've never heard a coherent, commonsense programmatic reason for going
to the moon first until now. Usually the argument is spread out among
so many possiblities that the Zubriacs (that's like a Deaniac for
Zubrin) can shoot them down with just as zany counterpoints. Some
examples I've seen:
1. moon firsters(moonies): We can refeul on the moon and then head to
Mars!

No one is seriously proposing that.

Perhaps not exactly that, but Bush proposed something similar in his speech
announcing the new program:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54868main_bush_trans.pdf

"Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far-
lower gravity using far less energy and thus far less cost."