Kim Stanley Robinson also kinda hits on this describing people who are raised on Mars. I highly recommend the Mars trilogy; best Sci-Fi I've ever read.
Is that astronomically expensive? Of course. But avoid gravity well. Start building a Moon base with mining facilities, then move to Ceres, and son on.
Current Mars fever is a distraction. We have no idea what Mars gravity could do to babies born there. Do parents have the right to raise their children in Mars? Even if they're viable, they might want to come to Earth and find out their bodies won't resist the gravity. What about waiting for animal tests?
Yes, but it's a distraction from doing absolutely nothing at all with humans in space. I agree in a saner world we'd have built a Moon base first, and then moved on from there. But it's apparently not how we as a civilization operate.
Instead we set lofty and slightly impractical goals. If we meet those goals, we usually take two steps back and wait for a few generations. But if we are not successful, we usually never try again.
It's not ideal, but yes, I'd absolutely prefer an ambitious Mars program over nothing at all. And for decades, until recently, nothing at all was where we were comfortable.
> We have no idea what Mars gravity could do to babies born there. Do parents have the right to raise their children in Mars?
Historically, we have been very bad at predicting these things, and we usually mispredicted on the side of doom. Yes, there will be a physiological impact, not just on babies, on everybody living there. However, there is no reason as such to assume babies in particular would be unviable there.
Today, parents can and regularly do make decisions about their children's mental and physical health that are absolutely known to be detrimental. For better or worse, we generally accept that children are brought up completely powerless over their lifestyle, their healthcare, their economic situation, their education, their belief system... Compared to that settling on another world with unknown dangers seems at least on par.
I'd wager that a child born on Mars today is way more likely to die of things other than gravity or the lack thereof. We already have animal test data in microgravity.
Mars is more livable than the moon because it has atmospheric CO2, (more) water, and a better mineral story.
>Today, parents can and regularly do make decisions about their children's mental and physical health that are absolutely known to be detrimental.
After decades of parenting and diet fads followed by a replication crisis, it's clear that nothing which filters down to the parents could be called anything close to known (much less absolutely).
> Mars is more livable than the moon because it has atmospheric CO2, (more) water, and a better mineral story.
The post I was answering posited a Moon base first because it's a less ambitious test bed, and I think that is largely correct. I was not making the case for a self-sufficient Moon colony instead of colonizing Mars.
> it's clear that nothing which filters down to the parents could be called anything close to known (much less absolutely).
It is very hard to make that argument convincingly in the face of, say, honor killings. Yes, theoretically you could argue that parents who intentionally harm their child technically do not "know" any better. But if we are talking on that level, that is certainly not an argument in support of why giving birth to a baby on Mars is somehow worse.
The goal of a Moon base is not living there, it's building from a place near to Earth but outside the gravity well. Martian atmosphere and water are a pie in the sky. If we're unable to build a base in the Moon, how are we supposed to do it in Mars? If we can do it in the Moon, it would be incredibly useful for preparing a Mars base.
That's all pretty obvious and it was the plan half a century ago. The only reason Mars is getting so much attention is to captivate our imagination. But what's the real purpose of living in Mars? I can't see the reason. I do see why it would be useful to send humans to space in general.
If this seems ridiculous or impossible, then that's the state of our Mars colony ambitions as well.
A lunar space station called LOP-G (lunar orbital platform gateway) is presently planned, and although it is a "smaller step" it is being widely attacked for not being useful.
Paul McAulie excellent "The mouth of the whale" comes to mind, for instance.