> I am not sure if this is possible at all but if it is, it is best done by starting with robotic missions.
It is very hard to imagine a self-sustaining Mars colony. You face two huge hurdles: a very thin atmosphere (average surface pressure 0.6% of Earth's) and low gravity, which sounds great until you consider the correlated long-term health problems.
Even if we could somehow import massive amounts of air and water to Mars, it would rapidly evaporate away and be lost to space. We may be able to establish science stations on Mars in some kind of pressurized air-tight dome habitats, but colonization, particularly independent colonization, is practically inconceivable for the foreseeable future. Mars is simply not suited at all to human life, and the problems with Mars are not something that can be fixed with any terraforming that doesn't involve somehow adding 2/3rds of Earth's mass to the planet and somehow recreating a magnetosphere.
It is very hard to imagine a self-sustaining Mars colony. You face two huge hurdles: a very thin atmosphere (average surface pressure 0.6% of Earth's) and low gravity, which sounds great until you consider the correlated long-term health problems.
Even if we could somehow import massive amounts of air and water to Mars, it would rapidly evaporate away and be lost to space. We may be able to establish science stations on Mars in some kind of pressurized air-tight dome habitats, but colonization, particularly independent colonization, is practically inconceivable for the foreseeable future. Mars is simply not suited at all to human life, and the problems with Mars are not something that can be fixed with any terraforming that doesn't involve somehow adding 2/3rds of Earth's mass to the planet and somehow recreating a magnetosphere.