Eventually, a moon base could let explorers live on the moon for weeks or months.
While NASA aim to have a moon base by 2025 other space agencies and companies have expressed an interest in the moon and its potential energy reserves.
President Bush's plans for a return to the moon in 2020, with a trip to Mars to follow, were all well and good, but now NASA has finally fleshed out the details of the moon visits, and it seems a permanent international moon base is in the cards.
It would be more significant to have a base on the Moon, rather than just going back.
He reaches for the grandest of grand visions, like his proposal to build a base on the moon by his second term.
Newt Gingrich's promise to build a base on the Moon by 2020 if he becomes president shows the best and worst of the man.
Russia says it also remains committed to sending cosmonauts beyond Earth's orbit in the future, including to a permanent base on the moon that it says could be used as a future launching pad for flights to Mars.
"We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope helium-3, " said Nikolai Sevastianov, head of Russian space vehicle manufacturer Energia, at a seminar in Moscow in January.
Last week President Bush gave his full backing to NASA's project to create a lunar base, and many believe that the moon could be a jumping off point for Martian exploration.
"Typically a habitat is less than the cost of large rocketry, " Michael Griffin of NASA told AP, and successfully utilizing the native materials on the moon will be a crucial to creating a viable base there.
The bay sits at the base of a gorse and hawthorn-laden cliff valley, with a half-moon of white sand looking out over the water.
We have the technology and ability to exploit the resources found on the moon and in the asteroid belt as well as sending a manned mission to Mars to set up a permanent base.
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