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SeattleRam
[Saw Elon Musk asked that question recently, might have been on Joe Rogan's pod cast. He brought up a good point that you won't have "permanent" settlement on mars until it can be self sustaining. Another words be able to produce it's own water, air and food and not have to rely on shipments from earth in case some disaster befalls earth, i.e. pandemic, meteor strike, carrington event, etc.
I won't even get into the long term effects of micro gravity on the human body that everyone seems skip over when talking about manned missions to mars or settlements on the moon or mars.
Plus the Martian top level of dust and soil is toxic.
Just a sample from one discussion of this:
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from [
www.abc.net.au]
Simon George, professor of organic geochemistry at Macquarie University, said ... "There's no ozone layer [on Mars] so UV rays penetrate down to the surface," he said.
"And they're very toxic, they give you a really bad sunburn if you're on the surface.
"But what happens is this UV radiation interacts with perchlorates and produces side products, probably chlorite and others, which are the things that are really toxic to life."
