The Space Shuttle failed it's most important characteristic. Namely to launch for $10M/flight and turn around in 160 hours. Instead costs were routinely above $350M/flight and turnaround times were measured in months. It would have been cheaper to cancel Shuttle and resurrect Saturn.
Putting a permanent facility on the moon would cost 1/10 of Mars base, but have the same sociological benefits.
Mars has lost most of its water and almost all of its nitrogen. If you could re-inflate Mars atmosphere by melting the polar "ice", bit its"air" would be 99.5% carbon dioxide, 0.15% argon, and 0.3% nitrogen. Not very breathable.
Also, precious metals mined on Mars could not possibly compete back on Earth with asteroid mining, because of transportation costs.
Mars can be colonized, but the settlers would need to live in controlled pressurized domes with greenhouses, and go outside only in pressurized suits or vehicles. Not very idyllic.
The real question is why do you want to go to Mars? If it's for flags and footprints, then the moon won't really help much. If Mars is a step in moving humankind out into the solar system, then the moon is essential into learning how to survive long-term in space, and demonstrating the key technologies. My preference is moon first, then Phobos, and finally the Martian surface after we're sure about native life on Mars.
The market for heavy space lift is in Low Earth Orbit (Tourism and Space Business Parks), and on the moon (mining and manufacturing). Mars is the stretch goal to keep public interest up.
Or could be Nuclear Pulse propulsion (Orion) systems built on the moon using lunar materials.
To lend credibility to the abilities of FMSAC, I was an intern at Douglas Space in 1965, and we were accurately backing out Thor-Delta launch performance using only radar skin tracking data and the equations of motion.
The moon has a treasure trove of minerals and eventually will become a heavy industrial site. Mars propulsion will be electric and use argon or water as propellants. They will be most affordably boosted from the Earth's surface. Partially-reusable heavy boosters change the cost equation, and make lunar mining affordable. After lunar mining the technology allows asteroid mining, and then when the technologies are thoroughly proven, we settle Mars.
Interstellar space is not empty. There is a surprising amount of SiC dust ejected from stars over billions of years. At 0.2c the computer chip will be disintegrated from impacts in a few years.
Unless the ballistic coefficients are identical between the ISS and the BA330 (they are not even close), the two systems will be in different orbits very quickly.
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