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There is no need to use the Moon as a "staging post" for Mars.

There are things that make the Moon interesting, but none of them are Mars.

Last thing I remember reading from NASA about manned mars exploration was via a space station in lunar orbit and associated moonbase. It wasn't that long ago but maybe they found preferred methods.

A space station at one of the Lagrange points is likely. If one wanted to do a space station near the moon, L1 and L2 would work. L1 is on the Earth side while L2 is on the dark side of the moon. L4 and L5 have long been proposed for long-term space stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Design_Reference_Mission#...

Mars DRM 5.0 is still for direct launch, but they keep on talking about side projects as being essential to Mars because mumble.

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