The situation at present is:

• The US government and NASA are very keen to send humans to Mars
• Obama in a speech said of the Moon “We’ve been there, done that”, and as a result, and because the head of NASA is a Mars enthusiast also, NASA is pretty much prohibited from putting serious thought into humans to the Moon during his administration.
• This may change with the next administration but none of Trump, Clinton or Sanders (increasingly seems unlikely to be candidate but his views may have influence) - they haven’t made any statement on their views regarding Moon versus Mars,. Perhaps they will only make decisions like that once they become president, as it’s not a vote winning election issue.
• With the previous Bush administration, the focus was on the Moon first.
• The head of the ESA however is very keen on setting up a global village on the Moon.
• China and Russia are both keen to send humans to the Moon
• There are many plans for private (independent from government) robotic landers on the Moon from many different nations, and we’ll see the first of those next year, with several confirmed launch contracts, and the Google lunar X prize closing in 2017.
• There are both Moon and Mars first advocates.
• Robert Zubrin and the Mars society are keen advocates for Mars, and they have a lot of clout in the US government. They are also supported by the Mars society, a large organization that does many Mars related events. Zubrin has written many books about his ideas for colonizing Mars.
• Others like Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo are very keen on the Moon and have written books on their approaches too, so there are plenty of Moon first advocates, but this approach doesn’t seem to have so much support in the US at present.
• Elon Musk of SpaceX is very keen on colonizing Mars. It’s pretty much his main reason for setting up SpaceX originally. Their rockets are designed around ideas that would make them useful for Mars as well as other missions, and their aim is to be able to send humans to Mars in the very near future. He has claimed that he will be able to send a million people to Mars before the end of this century.

I think myself that if anywhere can be colonized at all, it’s the Moon, far closer, easier, safer, much easier to export anything valuable found or created there to Earth or to supply spaceships in LEO or interplanetary spaceships, and it’s got many advantages over Mars if you look into it closely. But I think it’s not clear that anywhere in space is worth colonizing, when it is far easier to setup home in the most harsh deserts on Earth, e.g. the Mongolian desert or some such, than anywhere in space. Vast areas of Earth’s land surface is uninhabited, and is far more habitable than anywhere in space.

But I think that it is possible that we have bases and settlements in space in the near future. Needs to be dong something there that is valuable for Earth, including scientific discovery like Antarctic bases, also possibly commercial mining too, or space solar power, and perhaps colonization longer term into the future and I htink the Moon is by far the best place to start here.

See my Case For Moon First, you might be surprised:

Case For Moon First, free online version, also available on kindle as Case For Moon First: Gateway to Entire Solar System - Open Ended Exploration, Planetary Protection at its Heart

We have a group to discuss the Case for Moon first on facebook too: Case for Moon, facebook