Aviation Week reports NASA insiders are pushing for a manned trip to the asteroid belt, or the Lagrange points before doing a lunar base. Such a mission does not require a lander, a vessel with the rocket power to soft land and then lift off again. Such a lander does not exist now, and might take halfway to forever to develop. An asteroid mission only requires a space craft large enough for a years long mission. It has to carry enough food, water, and air for the round trip. Going to a near earth orbit asteroid would reduce the travel time to a matter of months, as opposed to years for a mission to the Martian moons, or the main asteroid belt.
Such a mission would create the kind of excitement the Apollo missions enjoyed.
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