First, go to the moon.

NASA is betting on the Moon after the agency announced last night its plans to build a permanent lunar base—one that may be used to prepare a manned trip to Mars.

Despite a lack of resource-stocked ice sheets at the Moon's top and bottom, NASA hopes to send manned missions by 2020 to the the open-sourced outpost at one of the lunar poles, where the base can harness increased sunlight. . .

“The agency is betting that on the Moon, we’ll find not only scientific but economic opportunity: extracting water from lunar ice for rocket fuel, even processing lunar dirt to find oxygen to breathe,” says Jones. “The big question is: Can we locate those resources and get at them in time to show there is a payoff waiting on the Moon? Proving the answer is ‘yes’ is the key to staying on the Moon once we go back.”

Well, how about helium-3?

Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium 3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, nonpolluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim it's the fuel ofthe 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any of it is found on Earth. But there is plenty of it on the moon. . .

Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tonscould supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt.

Well, that's assuming that we also master the technologies of helium-3 fusion. I liked this bit: "When the moon becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."