I agree that the President probably meant the Moon as launchpad in an allegorical sense. I believe that Mr. Glenn misspoke in his comments.

If our rocket scientists are smart they'll launch a Mars-bound craft from EML-1 where everyone on half the planet can watch the departure. And it also just so happens to be the lowest delta-V launch point from cislunar space to anywhere in the solar system.

I disagree, though, that science alone can sustain the space program. I don't believe that the public at large can be convinced on science alone to sustain the space program with any kind of vigor. With Mars as the destination and not just another step to the solar system you end up with the kind of infrastructure we have now - very specialized. A Mars-specific infrastructure may support a couple of small missions, but over time, say a hundred years, it won't be able to sustain itself.

A robust cislunar infrastructure that incorporates commerce and trade into its fundamental design will provide growing resources to the space sector, in terms of capital and materials, that will allow us to go to space for real and for good.

I agree, there is a lot of science to be done on the Moon. Crater counting, sizing and dating (dull but vital work) will allow us to establish a historical impact record. The Aitken Basin will give us our first glimpse into a rocky planet mantle. Hydrogen traces, whatever their form, at the ever-dark craters. Searching for lava tubes. Setting up astronomical scopes in the natural cold-traps at the poles.

But there is also trade. Providing power for all of the above activities. Servicing our tools so we don't have to throw them away anymore. Mining the regolith for not only oxygen (40-45% of the average of anything we harvest), but also hydrogen to help fuel active cislunar activities, silicates for solar panels or computer chips (all that free vacuum!), exotic metals for doping those solar panels to maximize their productive efficiency in the glare of nearly 1500 W/m^2 of pure sunlight, structural materials such as titanium and aluminum and others that could be used to invest in permanent energy from SPSes or even build the hull of the first large-scale human craft to Mars. Which could also be fueled from Moon materials.

A base at EML-1 could be reached relatively easily from the ISS, which could then become the LEO transit node to points beyond, serving all inclinations of launch since the last century.

From EML-1 we can start cleaning up GEO for better future comm sats. We can start servicing and upgrading our Sun and Star Watchers - the most valuable lesson of the Hubble, and one that we've hopefully already learned. We can maintain space-based asteroid watch telescopes to start charting the debris in the inner Solar system and developing gravitometric maps over time to find even better trajectories to get where we want to go. EML-1 can serve as an on-ramp to the interplanetary superhighways for cargo and probe delivery. It can serve as the lauch and retrieval point for free-flyer microgravity science and production to make all the materials scientists happy.

All of these are direct, relevant things for John & Jane Q. Public. Better satellite reception, less uncertainty about objects falling from the sky, cheaper prices on better goods. That sort of thing.

I believe it's far too easy for the average person to think that okay, yeah, the pictures from Mars are pretty and all, and yeah, there once was water, but, uh, you're telling me it's going to be easy to put a base there so that a small handful of overly bright young individuals can romp around for a couple of months every couple of years? Aren't y'all looking for water now? And if you're going to be building your base somewhere else why are you going to send more probes to the same spot? And you know, the current pictures kind of look a lot like the old Pathfinder pictures, or even sort of like the old Viking pictures...

When people talk about throwing money away in space, they're talking about buying an $800Mn piece of equipment and then chucking it into the void, where it becomes useless after a while. At least on Earth we could recycle it.

Any kind of base on the Moon is going to be but one part of a larger space infrastructure. Building lots of the same rocket is another good idea. We're never going to be able to get the cost of the rockets themselves down until we start building them in number. We've got the Delta IV, we've got the Atlas 5. We can build a CEV (or we should be able to, I like the caplet idea), and we can start building upon the assets we already have in space.

But commerce and trade, industry and services, have to be invited along for the ride. Without them, we'll be left with more of the fading memory we have now. Do space right, make it a place where real people can actually think about getting real jobs, and the enthusiasm will grow. Keep it hermetic and esoteric and science-driven like it is now, and NASA's budget will continue to shrink as a part of our national efforts, especially over the next 30-40 years as we deal with the Baby Boom retirement.

Ad Lunam Commercium,
Ken