With the recent announcement that NASA will not be going back to the moon in the 2020s, NASA is now setting its sights on a different destination.  Mars is still the long distance goal and so the intermediate goal is the asteroid belt.  This will allow for a few things.  The first will be to test the long term ability of humans to exist in space.  The second will be to have a closer look at the asteroids (better not tell Magneto).  The third will be to more closely examine the interior of asteroids and determine how better to blow them up, which would hopefully have the end effect of both stopping any planet killers before they get to earth and to give Michael Bay fewer reasons to ever make another movie.  I personally don't see it happening.  This is still in the planning stage, but the space race in the 1960s was partially driven by the supposed need for better ICBM missiles.  No so motivation occurs this time.  As something of a forward looking environmentalist with a strong upbringing in science fiction, I think it may one day be imperative to test out terraforming on another planet so that we can do it on ours.  This may be one of the things which will eventually get us to Mars.   
 
In the meantime if NASA does go for the Asteroid Belt it will result in a lot more fiction around it, some of which would undoubtedly be in comic form.  So would it be an interesting location to read about or just a bunch of rocks?