There may be few things in space less interesting than asteroids – they’re big, lifeless masses of rock, and if you ever encounter one odds are it will result in your death. However uninteresting they might not matter, says one MIT scientist: According to him, we ought to think about landing on a further away asteroid before attempting a manned mission to Mars.

“It’s the destination that’s important, not the object,” asteroid scientist Richard Binzel told the Boston Globe. “Certainly, some objects will be more interesting than others, but the fundamental goal is to have an interplanetary test flight.”

It makes plenty of sense, if you think about it for a moment. There are literally millions of asteroids between the moon and Mars. Though they lack an atmosphere of any kind, that’s at least a constant that can be accounted for. Without an atmosphere or organic matter, they’re the perfect testing grounds for equipment. Most importantly, they’re close enough that humans could theoretically make it there and back alive.

Meanwhile, NASA is in the midst of a multibillion dollar plan to lasso, or “bag” an asteroid and tow it close enough to Earth for humans to visit.The Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, plans to use a robotic probe to move a near-Earth asteroid closer to Earth. NASA’s Orion spacecraft would then transport astronauts to and from the asteroid. NASA says they hope to have the mission completed by no later than 2025.

Binzel believes this misses the point. If NASA wants to remain within the Earth-moon system, he argues, they can already do that. He believes the point of visiting an asteroid is to stretch our destination capabilities rather than landing on an asteroid for the sake of landing on an asteroid.

“The point is really having stepping stones for advancing toward Mars,” he said.