That’s fine. Wanting to colonise Mars, and being willing to work on it, and not on say crypto or ad serving or military pursuits, is still a net win.
It's not the 60s anymore, the US should do better than just an Apollo program 2.0, going into crazy Mars expenditures without a plan would guarantee you just that.
The inspiration should be the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan.
In both instances the super-geniuses with type-A personality got you to the Promised Land, but then what happens? They move on the next shiny thing.
The Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan were able to continue because once the super-geniuses got the US to the Promised Land there were operators who got to keep the project going.
Generals, admirals, ambassadors were more than willing to dedicate their lives as operators to make sure that the U.S. Govt and its citizens would actually get a ROI on the 2 endeavours. You can say it's patriotism, status-seeking, the thrill to have authority over powerful weapons, borders and huge economic resources. Whatever the reason there were operators at the helm once the super-geniuses got out of the picutre.
The Apollo Program had the same amount of super-geniuses but no operators to take the helm to secure ROI, that's the reason why the U.S. Govt. had to pull the plug on the whole program.
The only reasonable method of shipping rocket fuel to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system is to mine and refine it off the moon or an asteroid, which means a moon base or mostly self-sustained asteroid colony would need to exist first.
Why do you think we’re refining methane-burning engines?
You are going to need to produce 10,000x more energy than your fuel contains to make the fuel, and that energy has to come from somewhere.
Are you even attempting to Google these questions before posting them here with such an aggressive tone? Manufacturing oxygen on Mars is demonstrated engineering [1]. Manufacturing methane, theoretically sound and demonstrated in the lab [2].
This is what I meant by the aggressive strain of ignorance having overtaken the science with popular astronautics [3]. Some folks read a hot take on Musk and what Hawthorne hasn't done, ignore the thousands of scientists demonstrating actual technology a hundred million miles away, and then assume they're vindicated when the rest of us get tired of arguing with willful denseness.
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abp8636
[2] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20170001421/downloads/20...
I just don't see a Mars colony as a reasonable goal without sending potentially thousands of rockets full of tools and materials, which is too expensive to do without an already existent space mining and processing industry.
Until they are asked to go AND stay for say 5 years, then all of a sudden it's a completely different answer they'll give you.