Well I guess it depends if you're an optimist or a pessimist about the thought of living in a remote, hostile place, doing science and research that may have extraordinary repercussions for the entire species.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to jump out of this deep gravity well just to be stuck on another one at our current technology levels. Instead asteroids will be much more inviting and the technology to harvest them will combat the large existential risk from rogue asteroids that is one of main arguments for the colonisation of other planets in the first place.