Of course not. There won't be shit there till some one goes there and makes shit there. It doesn't take a high IQ to figure that shit out.
Everything about mars is surmountable except the free availability of oxygen.
Free oxygen in earths atmosphere is probably the single biggest factor in the growth of industry. Bigger than coal or oil.
Without this 'commons' thats dirt cheap, industry becomes massively expensive. Even running a fucking propane tank on a fucking canteen as a small business, feeding construction crew on mars? Not gonna happen when someone like google monopolizes the air business to squeeze out both economic enemies and political enemies.
You can't have free capitalism on mars because you can't have cheap industry on mars, because the very foundation of industry, metallurgy would be too expensive to get started. And the giant web of small businesses would never even have a chance.
The closest you'd get is one of those "company owned towns", where people work like slaves and end up in debt. Behind that would be tourism and a much tinier class of high level professionals. In otherwords, for 95-99% of the people who would be needed to do the grunt work, besides the "I get to go to mars!" perk, it'd be life and limb risk, in order to be stranded, worked like a dog, taken for everything your worth because companies in control have zero incentive to allow any sort of free industry rather than providing all the services themselves, and thus zero hope of upward mobility in such a society.
A mars colony would probably fail outright.
A PHD physicist, if they fail to get their grants renewed, and lacking work, can go run a fucking hotdog stand while living in a shitty apartment. A PHP physicist on mars whos no longer needed, has spent ALL their money on overpriced essential services, no matter how they may try to save, services likely paid in marsbucks (nonconvertible because usd doesnt like competition), and is faced with sleeping in a sleeping bag in the free-oxygen commons of the colony (if they even have that), or taking a one way trip back to earth, broke. Because you're not gonna find a hotdog stand on mars. The oxygen to run grill, forget the cost of shipping the friar, isn't free.
And neither is the massive quantities of oxygen involved in refining native metals/metallurgy to make things on mars instead of shipping them.
Thats called a bad investment.
Mars as anything more than a waystation is probably not happening for a long time (50+ years).
Antarctica is much closer, has oxygen and water and a wealth of metals and minerals to exploit. Only problem it has is heat and food. The heat could be supplied by thorium reactors and food can be imported if the mines are rich enough to support the expense.
You know thats interesting that you mention Antarctica. So many times mars was mentioned, I thought "what about here on earth? What about the ocean floor or antarctica?"
I'd fund a private colony there. I bet a lot of people would.
There’s that and the little known fact that they’ve never even been to any terra firma called Mars.
The world is a stage.
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