Comment Re:..Money Needs To Go Into This.. (Score 2) 215
That's one of the reasons for an international space station -- so we have a launch point without all the overhead of booster rockets. Also, we can use it to assemble larger spacecraft from components that are shot up using smaller, cheaper boosters.
Mars would potentially be better, if it has enough raw materials to build spacecraft there, "from scratch". (IIRC, the plan for a manned mission involves sending an advance probe to synthesize fuel from the enviroment, so when we get there we can just fill'er up and head home.) Otherwise, there's not much point building a spacecraft here, then sending it to Mars, just so we can launch it again from there.
Mars would potentially be better, if it has enough raw materials to build spacecraft there, "from scratch". (IIRC, the plan for a manned mission involves sending an advance probe to synthesize fuel from the enviroment, so when we get there we can just fill'er up and head home.) Otherwise, there's not much point building a spacecraft here, then sending it to Mars, just so we can launch it again from there.
