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Because of the gravitational influence of Earth there's no stable Moon-Sun L1 point. The Earth would keep pushing anything there one way and then the other. A

Because of the gravitational influence of Earth there's no stable Moon-Sun L1 point. The Earth would keep pushing anything there one way and then the other. Also, the extant atmosphere of Mars is a big advantage. It's not much but it helps at lot relative to vacuum with soaking up heat, letting you synthesize oxygen, etc. And while Mars doesn't have much free hydrogen it has a lot more than the Moon does. Oh, and then there's daylight. A day on Mars is about a day on the Earth. A day on the Moon is a month. So you've got to have lots and lots of batteries if you're going to last out a lunar night. On Mars you just need a bit more mass of batteries than you have of solar panels. And there's more gravity on Mars which might be important. We know what 1G does to the body and we know what 0G does to the body but nobody knows if there's a difference between the .4G you get on Mars and the .15G you get on the Moon.

patall 10y ago
Well, L1 is not stable anyways so you would also have to correct for that. Also, due to the fixed rotation Moon has mountains of ethernal light that could provide constant solar power. And last but not least, the lower gravity on the moon (according to wikipedia) makes space elevators possible even with current technologies. As those would make space travel a lot easier, thats a huge argument to colonize the moon first.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  And there's also the shorter transit time from Earth. Really, there are a lot of good reasons to think about establishing a settlement on the Moon before Mars. But I still think that trying to terraform the Mooon is a bit unreasonable. And yes, L1 is unstable. But the lower bound on how little fuel you have to spend staying at the Mars-Sun L1 is much, much smaller than the Moon-Sun L1. I'd guess 10 m/s of delta-v every year for the Mars/Sun one and 10,000 m/s every year for the Moon/Sun.

patall 10y ago

Well, L1 is not stable anyways so you would also have to correct for that. Also, due to the fixed rotation Moon has mountains of ethernal light that could provide constant solar power. And last but not least, the lower gravity on the moon (according to wikipedia) makes space elevators possible even with current technologies. As those would make space travel a lot easier, thats a huge argument to colonize the moon first.

Symmetry 10y ago
And there's also the shorter transit time from Earth. Really, there are a lot of good reasons to think about establishing a settlement on the Moon before Mars. But I still think that trying to terraform the Mooon is a bit unreasonable. And yes, L1 is unstable. But the lower bound on how little fuel you have to spend staying at the Mars-Sun L1 is much, much smaller than the Moon-Sun L1. I'd guess 10 m/s of delta-v every year for the Mars/Sun one and 10,000 m/s every year for the Moon/Sun.