that it makes sense to go to the moon to refuel for a trip to Mars. Don't even try to put those words in my mouth because I'll spit them right back in your face. I get very hostile when people try to pull that crap on me.

I have repeatedly said that if ice or harvestable water does exist at the lunar poles, then using proposals such as maglev catapaults or the steam rocket idea to sent that ice to Earth orbit is possible. Once there, it can be processed into fuel and consumables to service both manned and unmanned spacecraft bound for anywhere. No one has sent anything to examine the lunar poles specifically to look for water/ice. A single lander/rover could answer a lot of questions about what is and isn't practical.

Space resources for use in space - that's what I mean by infrastructure, along with the communications and navigation resources to support broadbased exploration. A true space infrastructure provides the ability to do things in space without having to launch everything off of the Earth first. The first missions are always the hardest because those are the ones where you begin to set up the equipment needed to create the infrastructure. Once in place, things become a lot easier.

Your obscession with Mars comes at the expense of everything else possible, and I believe that's too high a price to pay. I'm not interested in a single mission to anywhere, even Mars. If history tells us anything, it's unlikely there would be more than 1 or 2 missions to Mars if we go the Mars Direct route. Given the attention spans of most people, they'd be bored with it before the first mission was halfway over. If that's all we do, then why bother? I'm interested in the ability to actually have people live and work in space, all the way from LEO to L1, the moon, Mars, NEOs, comets, and whereever else we want to go. Mars is but a single destination, and perhaps not even the most interesting one at that. The whole freaking solar system is out there. Open your eyes to the possibilities.