So, I was thinking, humanity has been looking at the stars for a few hundred years now. By now we should have a pretty good grasp of how the universe is constituted, I.e. what all materials basically exist and what everything is made of. We also have a good idea how stars are formed, how planets come together, how left over stuff exist thru out the solar system and galaxy. Basically, we really aren't going to gain any material benefit from finding out what a particular asteroid is made of. We might send more probes to Mars to see if there is any signs of ancient life having existed there, but really, what material benefit would we get from it? As far as that goes, would knowing it now or twenty years from now change anything?

What I'm saying is that everything we are doing right now is just adding to "book knowledge", but nothing practical to humanity on a whole. Billions of dollars just to add a couple of bits of info to the text books, when we basically know most of the answers. Isn't it time we changed things up and put that money to good use?

Why don't we take all that money we spend sending out probes and put it into a program to start putting man out into space?

Start out with an Earth surface to low orbit crafts, like envisioned by Reaction Engines Ltd, and their Skylon ship; a reusable ship like the shuttle, but capable of hauling increased tonnage into orbit. Build an assembly plant and habitation facility in orbit. Then use that facility to build a ship capable of ferrying enough material to the moon, with personnel to construct a basic moon base. Then just keep using that ship, and build others, to ferry more material and personnel to the moon. Begin to mine the moon for material to fabricate infrastructure on the Moon, and to send back to Earth.

At the same time, start up a program, like the Troy project of Reaction Engined to send exploratory crews to Mars to survey for best sites to colonize on Mars. Once we have the Moon progressing nicely, and a permanent colony supply raw materials to Earth, and a respectable transport fleet, plus the expertise of colonizing a foreign planet, we can implement the next step by going to Mars and founding a permanent presence/ colony there.

How long would this take? We aren't doing nothing now, so at this pace it will take forever. So if it takes 25 years to get to Mars, is that not a better schedule than never getting there?

By the time we are making Mars and Moon part of a permanent part of humanity's home, we should be well fixed to keep moving out to other planets or their moon's.

Of course, we can't depend on NASA/government to do this, so it would be up to private enterprise to get it done...at least till the crooks in D. C. saw the profits in it and had to jump on board.