Musk: "We're going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction."

[Metaphorical]

23. Musk can't get a ride home

I have long suspected that Musk was a stranded Martian who has been trying desperately to raise the technology of the planet to a point where he can finally get back home. That's all he actually cares about, and the stupid humans keep thwarting him at every turn.

I agree with other commentators here. Colonizing the moon makes a great deal of sense at this point - it's achievable, there are enough volatiles to reduce the need to cart expensive materials up Earth's gravity well, it has low gravity making it ideal as a staging platform for solar missions, and it is a natural sling shot, adding it's momentum to that of the Earth. It may have the advantage of having lava tubes close to the surface, which can significantly reduce the need to dig. Solar radiation is a big problem on the Lunar surface, and environmental containment becomes much easier in tunnels.

Mars is problematic - you need to be able to create two completely self-contained environments (ship and planet) for anywhere from 3 to 10 years. You have to deal with highly corrosive winds and dust, water is always going to be a problem, the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and there's almost no nitrogen in the atmosphere or phosphorus in the soil, meaning that before you could do farming you'd need an absolutely massive amount of ammonia (and this is not even taking into account the fact that Mars only receives about 45% as much sunlight as Earth.

Mars is a long term (centuries if not millennia) project, and would STILL require that Earth have a moonbase to be able to even attempt.