"Humanity" isn't a preschool classroom where we all hold hands and do one thing at a time like the teacher says. It's fine for some people to be working towards the future while others are trying to fix things in the present.
There is no reason that people who want to take on a ridiculous challenge shouldn't.
> ...you could build out sustainable settlements in the Antarctic, the depths of the Sahara...
That isn't an argument. I don't know what that is.
People who die on their way up to Mount Everest could .... ? People who spend their lives playing games could ... ? What a strange way to think.
Its good that different people really do want to do different things. Some of the best of have been taking on unbelievable challenges, pass or fail, live or die, since history began. Celebrate it.
However, this does not mean that other required technologies, like for transportation or for protection against dust, cannot be solved before.
I also agree that recycling technologies are actually more important than spacecraft technologies, because they are equally applicable on Earth, not only on the path to other planets or in bases established there.
I do not believe that interplanetary travel will be possible for humans otherwise than in spaceships with artificial gravity produced by rotation.
This not only would avoid the health problems (the experiments on mice in the ISS imply that a gravity as high as 2/3 of that of Earth might be necessary for preventing harmful effects during long-term missions) but it would also simplify many of the recycling technologies, because handling fluids and powders is difficult in weightlessness. It would also simplify the growing of plants or fungi.
A couple thousand people live in Svalbard, though.
People do stay McMurdo over winter and there are many physical and mental problems because of the conditions, isolation and limited physical limitations.
https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/anta...
In big cities there are a lot of people who, at least for a big part of the year, spend all their lives only inside their home apartment and inside their work office.
If someone had been willing to spend many times more money on a base in Antarctica, it could have been built to have a much greater interior space and with much more comfortable facilities, so that for the people living inside it there would not have been significant differences between living there and living in some big city of the Earth, especially now, when with modern communications they can speak face-to-face with anyone else on the Earth, at any time.
People living in the far north type of places suffer significant suicide and drinking problems, when compared to typical people from other places because of the dark.
Mental health living in Mars is going to be a killer, life there is worse than living in a isolated prison. Try living in your home without any human contact or fresh air, and now imagine doing that for the rest of your life.
Lastly, money is not unlimited. The cost of a launch today is already tens of billions, the ISS cost hundreds of Billions. The cost of a mars base will be Trillions. Not sure why you think this is trivial consideration. If the US wont give free healthcare to its citizens who actually are productive and pay taxes, why would it spend an equivalent amount for a man or woman or a few of them to grow potatoes on Mars ?