[BirdofPrey]

Recycling air is simple easy, so is recycling water (and human waste even), spaceships/stations have been doing it for decades.  The real hang ups are food production and dealing with garbage.

Also the problem with the Moon is it is effectively a detour on the way to Mars.  It won't help us develop anything new we couldn't already figure out already before going to Mars (why test habitats on the moon if the first step is testing on Earth anyways.  After that you go to LEO for a bit), and it doesn't actually have all that good of a selection of the resources needed to sustain life.  Decent for mining, I suppose, but it's still less fuel to take a Hohmann to and from an asteroid to mine stuff), but there's little water there, and nothing much in the way o materials needed to create life support gases.

If you're really interested in space colonization, check out what Buzz Aldrin has been up to lately.  The second man on the Moon says, "screw going back there, get your ass to Mars"

[666maslo666]

Recycling air is simple easy, so is recycling water (and human waste even), spaceships/stations have been doing it for decades.

Are you sure? Because ISS does not recycle everything, they vent CO2 and H2 overboard. I agree that food is the biggest hangup.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_ecological_life_support_system

In an ideal world I would support an ambitious Mars colonization program as it is the most direct way. But we dont live in one and manned space exploration is going to be severely limited by funding and current technology. We simply will not have the money to colonize Mars anytime soon. Even a flag and footprint mission is quite farfetched, and thats not even colonization. Attempting to do a Mars mission without having the needed funds and experience is the surest way to waste another few decades of manned exploration without accomplishing much.

However, a permanently manned base on the Moon is feasible while still being quite an ambitious goal. And it is colonization, we would undeniably learn a lot about how to colonize Mars or any other body by practicing it on the Moon. Baby steps first.

[rance]

Since this is a game set in the future, the baby steps could have already been made, we can skip straight to the fun part.