Thanks, Don
It seems obvious to my layman's mind that the moon is the place we want to start with. (Again, that is.) Mars is soooooo far away, and we still seem to be having our problems with human activity just in LEO.
Sure, Mars may be richer from a resource standpoint, but is economics really the first concern right now? It doesn't feel to me like we've properly established a sound foundation from which to fling humans into deep space. Once we do that, then we could more confidently turn our attention to matters such as off-earth resource utilization and exploitation.
Just an opinion.