Aside from scientific research (which can be mostly or entirely done remotely by machines), there is exceedingly little reason to inhabit Mars, or any other planet for that matter.

There are sociopolitical implications of extraterrestrial missions (think: space race), but in terms of human habitation at scale, what would be the point? In science fiction, there is usually a major impetus: the earth is dying, the earth was stolen by aliens, etc etc. In these cases, though, the fiction part handles most of the stuff that would be hardest in real life.

From a practical standpoint, anything that can be done on Mars can be done for mere fractions of the resources here on Earth. At some point, it just comes down to the economics. Even if there were major issues with pollution or resources shifting the planet towards uninhabitability, fixing or mitigating those problems is likely to use orders of magnitude fewer resources than going to Mars. If such problems were beyond fixing, it wouldn’t mean Mars gets cheaper. It would mean humans go extinct.

Now, there are charlatans who will say we absolutely need to inhabit Mars and will give you a barrage of tenuous reasons. Musk comes to mind. Usually this is done to drive investment in companies or technologies which have been nudged into seeming Mars-adjacent, but at the end of the day, they’re just raising funds for regular rich people stuff here on Earth.

Never because there will be no middle class within a couple of years

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Fuck mars.

Hahaha

Why would they ever need to ship corpses that far?

Professionally (like Apollo and Artemis)? Possibly within this century. And the first person setting foot on Mars will likely be a middle-class professional astronaut like Armstrong or Aldrin.

Privately? It’s going to be a while. Middle class people in any country still can’t even go to low Earth orbit, let alone the Moon or Mars.

I read A City On Mars and came away convinced that questions like this one are pretty silly.

Show us a Las Vegas that thrives on its recycled water alone. Show us an airtight building, made of materials that can be recycled into new building parts. Show us a self-contained arcology in Antarctica that’s so appealing, ordinary families dream of moving there to raise their kids.

Then we can talk about Mars.

Never. I don’t think large-scale habitation of Mars or any other planets will ever happen.

Why would they want to?

Even in a best case scenario the only thing to do on Mars is to sit inside some kind of bio-dome drinking recycled urine hoping that the destillation process didn’t remove all of the alcohol from yesterday’s batch.

When the rich billionaire fuckers who will have moved there need someone to clean their martian mansions or mow their space lawn.

80% of earth’s surface is still uninhabited. All of that (including the seabed) is vastly better suited to human settlement than Mars, and it’s right here.
There simply isn’t a reason to settle Mars at scale right now.
Once the oceans, the Sahara and Antarctica are full of overpopulated cities, we’re growing our food in low earth orbit and are desalinating oceans for drinking water, it might look different.
But I don’t think we’ll make it to that kind of population before we commit collective suicide.

the billionaires will need a slave class so probably as soon as going to mars is viable at all. Id think an earth middle class is a martian slave class

As soon as we can digitize our consciousness and stream ourselves there through the intergalactic routers.

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