Earlier quoted context omitted.
There will never be a colony on Mars. Not in the way we think about "colonies". For starters it's too cold, too dry, atmosphere is too thin, and there's no reasonably sustainable power source. But all of that is irrelevant because there's no magnetic field. So radiation. So unlivable. There's also no point in a colony there. If life ends on earth it ends on Mars. There are no materials there we want. It offers exactl…
I personally believe that the legacy we send to the stars will be silicon. Robots have landed on Mars. Maybe they will even figure out how to use minerals on Mars to build more of themselves. It is plausible to me that as far as space exploration is concerned that it will be autonomous within a few hundred years.
The rush to the Moon and then Mars is going to push robotics along the learning curve toward an explosion in off-world activity.
Asteroids will be where resource extraction goes off the charts.