>> I wish, just like all nations have a budget for defense, that they all have a budget for space exploration. Colonising mars would be the ultimate growth driver. Think interplanetary trade, tourism, asteroid mining. Not to mention population growth and diversity.

Blah blah blah, this is kindergarten level perception of reality and it's really sad that a large swathe of adults cannot conceptualize beyond cheap fantasy.

Main problem with Mars is that is has no magnetic field. Without that any attempt at terraforming it is pointless and wasteful. Say one would devise some scheme to warm the planet and melt the water. Result would be the water would evaporate and the water would be lost in space. Pointless.

There is water there, like oil reserves on Earth. Once burned, it's gone forever.

So first, one must invent some way of generating planetary-scale magnetic field which would envelop the planet and shield it from the solar wind which blows any gas particles away. That doesn't require going to Mars, if it will ever happen it will happen here.

I don't see how but hey ... that's what science is for.