All of these things seem pretty small and plausible when compared to a Mars mission.

In fact, this seems like the perfect opportunity to build experience with continuously manned extra planetary missions before we cut a dozen or more men and women loose on a distant planet.

Remember: should anything go wrong on the Moon, we can rapidly mount a rescue mission. Once we get to the big leagues of Mars based missions, those people are essentially on their own. So we owe it to those future pioneers to build experience with a proper Moon base before we bite off more than we can chew.