Bill Whittle

This is such a better idea.

You can go to Mars from the moon, but if you're just going to fly for six months, plant a flag,

The ability to develop a moon base is essential to the exploration of the solar system.

Getting something off the surface of the moon is hundreds of times easier than getting it off the Earth.

You don't have to fight the atmosphere.

The gravity is one-sixth as strong.

If you can put a base on the moon, the solar system is yours.

And Elon is a smart enough guy to understand

and to demonstrate what we learned during the Apollo era, and that is we don't know what we don't know until we find out.

And if you're going to go to the moon, you get to find out with a two or three day travel period, not a six month travel period.

Most people don't fully realize that the surface of Mars is 1% of the atmospheric pressure of Earth.

It is essentially a perfect vacuum.

There is nothing about Mars that's any different than being on the moon as far as the survival technology goes.

So do staging all of this stuff where you, if you, for example, let's say you have a problem on the moon base because some piece of technology that's being tried for the first time isn't working.

You can get additional supplies, repairs, rescue teams there.

You can get them there in three or four days.

You have a problem like that on Mars, you might have to wait two years.

And this decision to go to the moon instead of going to Mars is the most sensible and the most promising thing for the future of human spaceflight, specifically American spaceflight, that I have heard in a long, long time.

My pleasure, Michael.

It's a great day for America.