Seriously, I bet there are many rich people willing to go to the moon, if reasonable safe and fast. And this probably could be done with the moon quite soon ... and all of that would be a BIG push for everything else in space.

(especially if we manage to build rocket factorys on the moon...)

TL;DR Version (From show notes): We have not explored much of the moon at all, we can extract fuel and manufacture things on the moon, we need to understand how humans function long term in low gravity (rather than freefall), and finally, there are some unique science opportunities on the moon.

So is Mars. I do think we should be seeking out extremophiles on Earth and seeding Mars with them to see if anything takes hold, but I seem to be in a minority of one on that notion. :-)

("probably terran!" ... reference to the the mars chronicle from K.S.Robinson)

We already have. It's a liveless rock. How much more do we keep moving the goal posts and beating that dead horse?

Turns out the planet was earth - they were in Antarctica.

Clearly not comparable, but there's a big difference between salt flats in Namibia or the seater in Antarctica and landing in downtown manhattan or the Brazilian rainforest.

We've successfully sent half a dozen probes to mars, we've barely scratched the surface.

Potential areas for life might be in vulcanic areas underground.

Might not be a high chance, granted. But the chances that anything from your project survives are far lower - but it would definitely damage research on current or historic life on mars a lot.

That's true. But life does have a way of spreading around. And beware of constantly shifting the goal posts.