The moon has never made any sense as a stepping stone to Mars. Why truck fuel and materiel down a gravity well, only to bring it right back out again? Nor would the Apollo-redux spacecraft suitable to a moon mission be useful for a trip to Mars.<p>A realistic Mars mission would consist of a spacecraft assembled in earth orbit, then flown directly to Mars. However, the technology required to get a human crew to Mars and bring them back alive is so far beyond what we have now that the moon-as-a-stepping-stone plan is more of a way to avoid confronting the problems than a way to solve them.