In message , Sea Wasp
writes
Kleopatra44 wrote:

You can come home if thing's turn out bad on the moon. You can't do
that from Mars :-(

Um, why do you think that you could do the one and not the
other? Any expedition sent to either place would be designed for return
capability. If "something went wrong", which place would be better
depends on what the "something" is.

Don't think of the Moon as somehow being a hop,skip, and a jump.
It's still a hell of a long way away through a hell of a lot of vacuum.

It _is_ a hop compared to Mars.
If you had the means, you could at least rescue the crew if something
went wrong on the Moon that didn't totally destroy the ship.. "Mission
to Mars" notwithstanding, anyone on Mars is on their own.