Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think an actual Mars colony is centuries out just due to the amount of things left to invent to make it viable. More importantly, there just isn’t enough reason to bother doing it aside from satisfying the Edmund Hillary “because it’s there” urge. If you want more space to live, you’d be better off investing in women’s health and education so long run population trends can go down here in Earth. If you want natur…
Mars does have some benefits as the main living space over a space station at least. Gravity is gratis for one which really helps with long term health and we don't have to completely redesign our current technology to work if there's gravity where we will in space. And yes the resources for Earth are better found in the asteroid belt but it would probably be easier to mine and extract on Mars again because of gravit…
Well, sort of. Most of these aren't as convenient as they sound. Gravity is only about 40% of Earth's IIRC, so if you had humans there you'd still be contending with loss of muscle and bone density. If we're talking about ambitious future technology I think a spinning wheel station is probably a more stable way to keep people healthy. Plus you have to contend with seasons and weather. Wind, dust, wild temperature swings and all the extra wear on materials you will get as a result. . .
It would also take forever to actually thicken up the atmosphere, so you would probably want to be careful how much you go pulling CO2 out of the air to grow plants if long-term viability is your priority. As for mining, locality is a big help, especially if you're going to be remote-controlling drones, but contending with landing/taking-off on a planet is a huge logistical expense. Particularly if you're dealing with lots of heavy machinery for mining.