Compared to deep space, Mars is positively luxuriously bountiful in many ways. You can even go outside with just a compression suit and a tank of oxygen and the

Compared to deep space, Mars is positively luxuriously bountiful in many ways. You can even go outside with just a compression suit and a tank of oxygen and there's plenty of radiation shielding material just lying there on the floor (rocks). You can just lay solar panels and cables on the ground rather than a complex vibration-prone truss array, you don't have to worry about the mass of the nuclear reactor, etc. You don't even have to have all your buildings connected, they won't float away. You can use gravity for lots of things too, and you don't need to spin your entire chemical refinery (or just your kitchen) to make it work without special zero-g engineering. There's even oxygen in the atmosphere, it just needs "some" energy to release it. The super-fine possibly lung-shredding dust might be a bit of a issue though.