The Moon and Mars are two separate goals for the foreseeable future. It'll be at least a lifetime before we can launch Mars-bound payloads from the Moon as reli

The Moon and Mars are two separate goals for the foreseeable future. It'll be at least a lifetime before we can launch Mars-bound payloads from the Moon as reliably or cheaply as we can from Earth. Making one dependent on the other is bad for both. If you hobble a Moon mission with Mars exploration requirements, then that's resources wasted that could go directly to Lunar exploration. If you hobble a Mars program with a dependency on a Moon base, then you ensure that you'll die before seeing a human on Mars.