I completely disagree about the Moon being more difficult. We can get to the Moon in 3 days flat. We cannot do that with Mars; to go there, humans have to spend months in space being exposed to hard radiation. With the Moon, that isn't a problem because 3 days cosmic radiation exposure isn't a big deal, as proven by our many landings on the Moon in the 60s-70s.

On top of that, the Moon has proven mineral resources which can be mined and refined on-site a lot easier than trying to do the same on Mars.

Mars is just too far away. If you're going to neglect distance, then we should just skip Mars and go straight to Alpha Centauri or some other star with a bunch of exoplanets.