The much talked about Moon landing anniversary is a chance for everyone to drag out memorabilia and parade around aged astronauts as a reminder of what we once used to be able to do, but can’t do anymore. Forget a moon landing, we can’t even seem buy F-22’s anymore. Buzz Aldrin is pushing for a trip to Mars, arguing with other astronauts who back a return moon landing. And sad to say they’re both wrong. Even if another administration gets into office that sees NASA as something more than a supporting argument for fighting greenhouse gas emissions, a one shot trip is just the giant waste of money that critics say it is. The moon landings were historic for their time, but we have the technological infrastructure to do more than spend 40 billion on a long and very expensive trip to Mars that can never be repeated without reinvesting that money all over again. As Arthur C. Clarke had repeatedly pointed out, we need a bridgehead to the stars. That means we need infrastructure to tackle the gravity well problem and making the trip from earth to orbit affordable. The best odds of that lie with a space elevator. If we could invest the kind of resources we do into making the latest flat screen TV’s an inch thick, or a microprocessor the size of a gnat, we could be masters of the solar system.