Forget Mars. Let's go back to the moon.

All of us are excited about getting to Mars someday. But there’s a lot we don’t know—the impact of radiation exposure, how humans can work in low gravity. We already know space causes serious health problems: vision impairment and bone loss and things we don’t even know about yet. There’s so much more we need to learn, and we can learn it closer to home: on the moon.

There’s also a geopolitical element, right?

Several nations are interested in the moon: Russia, Japan, China, India, parts of Europe. We don’t want to look down from lunar orbit and watch other countries setting up camp on the surface while we go around and around. Let’s make sure we didn’t make a mistake by leaving a lunar settlement out of the picture.