- a submarine
- the middle of Death Valley
- the middle of Antarctica
- the (completely lifeless) top of mount Fuji
Living in a Mars colony would be a combination of all these experiences.
If you somehow have the magic sauce to make Mars enjoyable, you could offer this experience in the middle of the desert as well. You could tackle real habitation problems on this planet.
Just building a couple school buses (ISS) to float around the Earth took hundreds of billions.
And to the "what about nuclear war on Earth" argument: are you going to build a lightbulb factory on Mars? Semiconductor fab? Smelter? No Mars colony would be self sufficient for a realllllly long time
EDIT: Earth 2 Earth is interesting, though I don't know how you solve the vomit problem. Or the "sometimes the rockets explode " problem.
Absolutely, but then just one of these things will dwarf the ISS all on it's own. The old equations of space exploration affordability are being rewritten.
As for people wanting to go, there's a permanent base at the south pole, the peak of Mount Fuji is often a churned up field of mud from all the visitors and Burning Man looks like a ton of fun. Ok so some of that is frivolous. I'm ambivalent about the idea of Martian cities in the next 30 years say, but who can really look further ahead than that?
There's nothing that seems un-achievable about BFR. It seems to me these things will be going to space, and the Moon, and Mars at a ludicrously low cost compared to previous space missions. The real question is what will we do with that capability? I'm guessing we are going to do something with it. Musk's graphics are explicitly aspirational, but we'll do something with these vehicles and its going to be a heck of a lot more than any other plans I've ever seen.
Even at a "ridiculously low" price of $500k, you're basically offering a mount Everest experience for people. Dangerous , uncomfortable, generally hard to do if you're not super free. A crazy adventure
Some people are interested, but you can't argue much for economy of scales when the total market of affordability is probably tiny.
Only 5000 people have ever climbed Mt Everest.
People want to go to Mars. People want to try and live there. Scientists want to go there and learn, and explore.
On the other hand, people know what to expect from the rock that is Mars. If Mars was an unknown and people would want to go there to discover what's there, then the analogy would be correct.
Of course, people will still go, but reaching a critical mass for an unnecessary settlement (at which point it might turn slightly more alluring for more immigrants) remains to be seen. But I guess what happens happens, we'll see.
Maybe if Mars is some sort of lawless territory it can become the libertarian haven some rich people want, and could trick some future slaves to get sent over there....