We should think about colonizing Mars but not right away. It's like skipping 10 steps and trying to land on the 11th one without progressing naturally through a

We should think about colonizing Mars but not right away. It's like skipping 10 steps and trying to land on the 11th one without progressing naturally through all required evolutionary steps in the space tech development. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket in hopes that everything goes right from the first attempt. Iterations this way are way too expensive. Instead, Mars colonization should be though as an option at the point when humanity already could sustain life in space close to Earth — like in a space habitat city of 1000s of people with an option for fast logistics to Earth. But first, it should be a Moon colony (the mission Artemis) that could be made sustainable via many safe iterations close to Earth. Then we need to build a space habitat on Earth orbit and use the Moon base for the construction support. Not to mention learning how to build factories in Space to process asteroid mined ore. And only at this point it's worth start thinking about Mars colonization. That's like in a couple of hundreds of years at best. Before that all conversation about Mars are just pure science fiction. Only then when the habitat of 1000s of people could sustain life and travel in space independent from Earth it could be sent to Mars to ignite terraforming process and building a small base. The good thing is by this time we already could solve sustaining life without Earth in Space with no regards to Mars in general. In reality, by the time we start colonizing Mars there already could exist many Space habitats and human colonies beyond Earth. The thing is Mars is a really hostile and hard place to be. There is no reason for people to be there unless it has at least some livable condition. It's very cold (43% of Sun light), it has radiation, its dust kills all equipment. There shouldn't be humans based on Mars without an option for a fast escape or access to supplies should anything happen — that's what Mars orbiting space habitat would be there for. So, there is no reason to even talk about Mars colonization without achieving more reasonable progress closer to our home planet.