I’ve often said the same thing. South Pole and underwater cities would be easier than mars or even moon colony. As much as I want the later to happen- I think 1 million people on Mars or Moon will require something that makes them more appealing than even the worst Earth locations. That has to be something pretty drastic. Elon says motivation will be “it’d be cool”. I don’t think that is enough motivation. Still, I’d rather have the capability developed than not, and hopefully those motivations present themselves without being too dire (like a comet heading our way)

Africa was in Europe's back yard yet when they got the opportunity they colonized the Americas. Colonizing a formerly unexplored place where nobody has yet laid claim has a lot of appeal (and this time we (probably) don't have to kill/displace the natives to do it).

Europeans were kept out of Africa by disease.

I'd rather say the Europeans were kept out of Africa because of nowhere near European levels of valuable resources (think farmland, wood) other than slaves for centuries. Diamonds and uranium are a recent thing.

I always heard it was a logistic issue more than anything else? Getting from Europe to the Americas and then back in a sailing vessel is easier than getting to Africa's East coast and back.

Which explains why Africa was colonized so much more successfully than (checks notes) ... Australia?

A science outpost, specifically as a place to put telescopes, seems the most compelling. The rest of the population would then grow along side the science outpost to service it (food, transportation, etc.) A looong time until a million people, though.

Why would you put a telescope in a gravity well though?

Would it not be easier to build large structures in orbit or at one of the Lagrange points?

There's been some really interesting ideas for a new generation of telescopes that Starship's cargo capacity could enable. Telescopes on the far side of the moon are the classic example. They'd be shielded from the sun for 14 days out of 28, permanently shielded from Earth, and still have all the advantages of being in a vacuum. Gravitational-wave telescopes on the geologically-stable lunar surface are another interesting idea.

But I think my favourite idea is infrared scopes in the polar craters, some of the coldest places in the solar system. You don't need a complicated JWST-style extendable sun shield or limited helium supply. You are limited in terms of direction, but that's not a bad tradeoff.

I'm interested in living on Mars. I'm not interested in living in Antarctica.

Massive domes to act as greenhouses, melting a couple miles of ice cover. Fossils and untapped resources. Antarctica could be a lot of fun to colonize.

True, but I'm not sure difficulty is as relevant if the motivation is there. You can't terraform the South Pole. Mars reopens the frontier whereas the South Pole is a dead end

The South Pole starts out way more terraformed than Mars can ever be. It has air, water, gravity, and is warmer. You can just put up domes and it's already way better than Mars. Mineral wealth is only a mile down, under the ice.

Under the sea starts out way more terraformed than Mars can ever be. It has water, gravity, and is warmer. Mineral wealth is right at hand.

The cloud tops of Venus start out way more terraformed than Mars can ever be. It has air pressure, gravity, water, carbon, sulfur, and shirtsleeve temperature.

What motivation does Mars provide that those don't?

If your goal is to be a multi-planet civilisation, neither Antarctica nor the oceans of Earth would work; also the layer of Venusian atmosphere that you’re describing is way too cold for there to be useful quantities of metals you could extract from the rain (unlike the lower layers, where mountain tops are frosted with metal: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a11506/hea...).

The other option is the Moon, which has even less atmosphere and even bigger temperature swings than Mars.

Planets are for extreme primitives, anyway.

But the point was, if you haven't even proven you can settle a mildly challenging environment, your odds on an actually difficult one don't look good.

We know by demonstrations that we can make settlements in Antarctica and underwater, we just don’t have any reason to do more than science and military.

Venus, you could only settle by bringing in everything from outside unless and until you can convert the atmosphere in a large way into building materials — Mars at least you only need to convert it into fuel, because you can do at least some of your construction from rocks.

All the settlements on Antarctica are utterly dependent on enormous support frequently airlifted from outside. There have been no settlements underwater at all; little more than camping trips have been essayed.

On Venus, plastics, carbon fiber, water, buoyancy gas, and breathing air (I repeat myself) can be made directly from the air and clouds. Plastic and carbon fiber gives you building materials. Robots can gather minerals from the surface and deliver them by balloon to the cloud tops. Insolation provides abundant power, moreso than here; or, a lightweight, unshielded nuke plant may be suspended a mile or more below industrial plant, supported on its own balloon.

Mars will be much more unpleasant than Antarctica. We don't even know whether people can live for long in Mars gravity. We know that long weightlessness is quite harmful.

If you’re going to use that standard against nuclear submarines and deep-sea oil drilling, it is unreasonable to also say we can make those things from Venusian air. Yes, in a lab, sure — that’s proof of concept, far less than a camping trip, and roughly the same level as extraction of oxygen from rocks.

Easier is a downside.

It would be smart to demonstrate ability to do thing A before attempting thing B that is 1000 times harder.

With any luck, things you learn actually doing A, and then A' that is 10 times harder, and then A'' that is 100 times harder, will all turn out to be useful, even necessary, in tackling B. Failure is always an option, but there is no point in choosing it at the outset.

Maybe SpaceX should practice colonizing in Antarctica. They could fly all their gear in on Starships and do a dress rehearsal.