I agree with the title; for now. In the near term, perhaps even the next couple hundred years, it is likely that a colony on Mars would make zero sense aside from scientific research (even that could be done without people on the surface themselves).
Beyond that, I won't try to predict what will and won't make sense 500 years from now, 1000 years from now. Mars may not have a lot of resources, but it does have one thing that could be useful to a much larger and much more space-capable human population in the future: room. There's a lot of room there for people. We can argue all day whether that's realistic or not, but we should never assume that it will never make sense in the future based solely on the resources and problems of today.
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I agree with the title; for now. In the near term, perhaps even the next couple hundred years, it is likely that a colony on Mars would make zero sense aside from scientific research (even that could be done without people on the surface themselves).
Beyond that, I won't try to predict what will and won't make sense 500 years from now, 1000 years from now. Mars may not have a lot of resources, but it does have one thing that could be useful to a much larger and much more space-capable human population in the future: room. There's a lot of room there for people. We can argue all day whether that's realistic or not, but we should never assume that it will never make sense in the future based solely on the resources and problems of today.