This is a very flippant comment, but I will try to respond anyway - we simply haven't achieved a post scarcity society yet. Maybe we will at some point, but we just aren't there yet. So right now our time, money and natural resources are quite simply limited. So maybe it's not that we shouldn't have a base on Mars - it's just that maybe that shouldn't be the first step in human habitation in space.

What about motivating humans to strive for greatness? Being curmudgeon underground mole people sounds a lot less likely to inspire the next generation to strive to excel at STEM education. I think even just trying to colonize mars could inspire tens of millions of the next generation when they look up at the sky. A large majority of those won't go into the space colonization field and most will instead contribute to improving our lot and maybe even attempting to get to a post scarcity society.

I genuinely had a good laugh at the idea that simply by building an underground colony, the inhabitants would become "curmudgeon underground mole people".

I would personally love such a habitat, and would market it as a Safe Space for The Curmudgeonly(TM).

I don't see how it's any different than the parent comment in terms of being flippant. Should one meet any thing that humans may strive for with "why do that if we haven't done X first"? Why start a new startup if you haven't solved post-scarcity society?

We don't need to have a post-scarcity society before progressing science and technology by trying to and succeeding in colonizing Mars. Similarly we create plenty of technology while also not solving the post-scarcity "problem". Adding more resources or more people to solving a problem doesn't mean that it makes the problem easier or more likely to be solved. So you're creating this idea that we can't do X until we've done Y, when the truth is we can do X and Y.

Strategically I think we should create an international moon base first before going to Mars, but we can do both.

How long do you think until we can set up a base on Mars? Let alone other planets in the Solar system? 50 years, 100 years at the very least. If we don’t get started now, when will be the right time?

We flew to the Moon 50 years ago, logically there would have been human on Mars by now. That didn’t happen, so the next best time is as soon as possible. Like now.

As for limited resources, how much money do you think we spend for space exploration? We waste a lot more money and resource for other things. We should cut down those instead. Let’s take a trivial example. Do you think gaming is a waste of resource? Why don’t we cut down gaming?

That's not my point, I think either I didn't explain myself properly or people are missing it. What I want to say is that currently we have very limited resources(on the planetary scale) - no we don't have to wait for post scarcity to try, but I just don't understand why we're trying for Mars first instead of the moon, which is simply more achievable, cheaper, and fulfils all the goals of getting kids and adults excited about science again.