Hello p -

The "frontier analogy" fails completely when it comes to settlement of the Moon or Mars for simple physical reasons.

Whatever you'd like to believe, launch systems are fairly major efforts, requiring such great resources that they require governmental involvement.

Rockets are very different from wooden ships or wagons, which can be built by individuals with simple hand tools, and still are in many parts of the world today.

That's reason one. Reason 2 is that Mars is Mars-like damn it, not a second Earth. You can go to nearly any frontier on Earth and survive pretty well, but it will require vast resources to survive on Mars.

On the other hand, a man visited and tended lunar observatory is a different animal altogether. The Moon is also not Earth-like, what it is is Moon-like, and this presents advantages; with a much shorter travel time from the Earth to the Moon, a man tended lunar observatory presents itself as a real option for dealing with the impact hazard on simple cost terms.

ep