Yeah, especially since Mars is closer than the asteroid belt. The asteroids are beyond mars, between mars and jupiter. This obsession obama has with landing on an asteroid indicates a mind formed by bad hollywood fiction.
Doh! You’re right. For some reason I was thinking it was between Earth and Mars.
Wasted a completely good snarky comment.
You are wrong, because we routinely have more than 1,000 small asteroids ranging in size from rocks a few meters to tens or hundreds of meters in diameter passing through the inner Solar System and making near approaches to the Earth, occasionally between the Earth and the Moon, less than 240,000 miles distance. While it is true most of the well known and larger asteroids are to be found in the asteroid belt in a Solar orbit between Mars and Jupiter, There a plenty of the smaller asteroids sharing orbits similar to the Earth's own orbit. Eros will return to within 17 million miles of the Earth on its next close approach. See: NASA, Near Earth Object Program, Orbital Diagrams http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/
There are also a multitude of reasons why manned missions to the asteroids are highly desirable. Among those reasons is far greater accessibility to resources and return transport of manufactured products, scientific research into the origins of the Solar System and the Earth, and astronomical observation platforms. The larger asteroids in the Solar System may be exploited to harbor human communities by offering more habitable land space within the interior of the asteroid than there is total land surface on the Earth, using Ceres and Vesta as examples.
The most difficult and expensive part of space travel is the cost in energy, material, and labor to exit a planet's gravity well and safe return into the gravity well and a planetary atmosphere. When you avoid entering and exiting these gravity wells and planetary atmospheres, you very dramatically lower the demands and requirements for fuel, energy, and labor.
Although having some operations on the Moon is desirable and perhaps necessary to a Solar community, there needs to be a near Earth orbit station and another station at one of the Earth's Lagrangian points to be used as transit points for travel between the Earth, Moon, Mars, and rest of the Solar System. When traveling between earth and Mars, it would be most advantageous to first establish a transit station on one or both of the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos. Atmospheric shuttles would operate between the surface of Mars and the Martian noons, while the Earth to Mars spacecraft would shuttle passengers between a space station in low Earth orbit or the Lagrangian point to the transit station in low Mars orbit or on Phobos or Deimos.
The asteroids and comets in interplanetary space contain vast stores of metals, water, Solar energy, and other sources of energy. It is too costly to transport the raw materials into and out of planetary gravity wells. It is much more feasible to manufacture the raw material into finished goods for transport into the gravity wells, just as it is far more feasible than transporting finished goods out of a gravity well to destinations in space.
Asteroids also offer much more effective shielding against most harmful Solar and interstellar radiation outside the protection of the Earth's Van Allen Belts. Using an asteroid positioned in a Lagrangian point is a very useful means of protecting a manned space station against radiation and micrometeorites.