The primary focus of NASA's-- manned space program-- should be the pioneering and colonization of the rest of the solar system. That means building the space transportation and habitat infrastructure that can get humans into space and settled into the rest of the solar system. That would also mean minimizing the use of terrestrial resources while maximizing the use of extraterrestrial resources in order for humans to survive in the New Frontier. But any significant deviation of our manned space program away from the primary goal of-- human colonization-- would be a waste of tax payer dollars, IMO. And it seems obvious that the first logical step in that pioneering and colonization effort should be our closest neighbor in space-- the Moon.
But we've been to the Moon already. So why return?
