A few months ago, when European Space Agency director general Johann-Dietrich Woerner laid out a vision for his agency to lead the fashion in establishing an international Moon Village, I had a feeling of déjà vu. In January 2004 President George Westward. Bush announced his own Vision for Space Exploration, in which the U.S. would lead the globe back to the moon. Once we had gone there, and humans had learned to live and work successfully on another world, we would head on to Mars equally the ultimate destination.

Bush's idea was inspiring enough that, in addition to NASA, no fewer than 13 international space agencies signed on to participate in developing a program for reaching the moon. Unfortunately, the plan'southward implementation was badly flawed. NASA tried to relive the glory days of Apollo by focusing on 1-utilize vehicles that would transport everything to the moon from Globe. Apollo was a fantastic achievement, but information technology was not sustainable, which was in part why the plan was canceled in the early on 1970s. Bush's vision proved too expensive to sustain likewise, and in 2010 President Barack Obama declared that the U.S. had no need to go back to the moon, proverb, in essence, that we've been there, washed that. Instead, he said, nosotros would become to Mars without taking that acting step.

But a render to the moon is crucial to the time to come of human infinite exploration—and not just for the experience it would give u.s. in off-earth living. Our satellite is likewise rich in resources, notably water ice, which tin exist carve up via electrolysis into oxygen and hydrogen. These elements tin and so be used in fuel cells and in making liquid rocket fuel. If we are ultimately heading to Mars (or anywhere else), hauling that fuel off the surface of Earth is terribly inefficient. Much ameliorate to launch it from the moon, where gravity is one 6th as strong.

A return to the moon could too inspire the next generation and accelerate technology but as Apollo did—simply do so in a sustainable, stepwise fashion. The taxpayer needs to see a return on investment for this endeavor and not simply in engineering science development. For example, a spacecraft-refueling depot orbiting the moon—supplied with fuel refined from lunar resources, privately operated and selling its products to various infinite agencies—is one commercial on-ramp to bring the moon into our economic sphere of influence. Such activities could consequence in a major reduction in launch mass from Earth's surface, thereby cutting the cost of infinite missions. This has the potential to create a slew of industries that in turn create loftier-tech and well-paid jobs.

The immediate next footstep in lunar exploration should be robotic prospectors on the lunar surface to define the extent, form, distribution, and ease of extractability and refinement of those resource identified from orbit. An international effort could facilitate this disquisitional operation. NASA does have a Resource Prospector mission in development, only information technology is being washed on a shoestring budget that could be cut at any time. Russia also has a Lunar-Resurs program nether development, partnering closely with the European Space Bureau. And let u.s.a. not forget China, which became in 2013 the third nation to successfully soft-state on the moon. Mainland china plans to return lunar samples to Earth inside the next couple of years, again following the U.S. and Russia.

Currently the U.S. vision for human being space exploration is to use a robotic spacecraft to capture a small boulder from an asteroid, most one meter in diameter, and redirect it to an orbit around the moon. Humans will and so explore that bedrock as practice for an eventual voyage to Mars. But this so-called Asteroid Redirect Mission will take no applicability to Mars, largely because working in microgravity is a very different proposition from working on the surface of a planet. Basically, it is a fast rails to nowhere.

Which brings us back to Woerner's Moon Hamlet, which spacefaring nations applauded when it was presented at the ESA-led "Moon 2020-2030" meeting last December. Correct now the U.S. is standing on the sidelines, watching other nations motility on. Aye, Mars is the ultimate destination, just our land has an sick-defined pathway on how to go there. The moon is the enabling nugget and the key to our achieving that goal. We need to redefine the way we wait at human space exploration such that any coin spent on space travel can exist viewed as an investment in the future.