Before I read the comments, planetary colonization is something I’ve thought of for half my life. We are not in a technological position at the moment to make a lunar colony happen, and definitely not by 2020. I’m fully in favor of continuing to develop space, but NOW is not the time. There are, as I’m sure other will point out, so many issues still unresolved. The biggest in my mind are, how do you transport all the material to the moon when the tiny Lunar Lander is the extent of our deployment thus far? There is no water, and humans need water first and foremost. That means you can’t even grow a hydroponic garden. We’d have to be sending water via rocket on a regular basis, and that’s just a huge waste of money.
When we can establish a proper space station, then the moon might be the next step, but Mars is still a more likely destination, if we can cut the travel time down to less than six months.
