This is getting further off topic from the article but your post reminded me of a random idea I had along the same lines - if one of these billionaires who wants to colonize Mars wants to take a practice run, they should build a city in Antarctica. Not just a little scientific outpost like we have now, but a full small-city-sized settlement away from the shores that people can actually live in year-round enjoyably without being insanely depressed or repressed. Seems like a tall order, but still way simpler than doing the same on Mars.
My suggestion has long been a viable, long term colony at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Far more hospitable than Mars and exceedingly cheaper to get to and resupply. And as bonus, is an equally pointless waste of resources and possibly lives...
The most crucial difference being that on Mars your engineering to stop your air leaking OUT, while at the bottom of the trench you'd be engineering to stop the water getting IN. Which reminds me of this excellent Futurama joke...
Fry: How many atmospheres of pressure can the ship take?
Professor: Well it's a spaceship, so anywhere between 0 and 1.
This is often used as an argument against space settlement. How can they build a settlement on Mars if they can't even build a settlement in Antarctica.
But doing anything like resource extraction or permanent settlement is simply not allowed by the antarctic treaty system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System, and would be heavily fought by all the signatories of that system.
It does seem like it would be much less costly, as measured in hundreds of millions of US dollars, to build a fleet of something equivalent to Russian's heavy nuclear powered icebreaker fleet, than to colonize mars. Just as one essential link in the supply chain and infrastructure if you wanted to sustain a newly founded coastal city somewhere in Antarctica.
Sure you do, the only feasible way to make a mars colony work is one-way trips of people / supplies once every nine months, when the earth/mars orbits align best for interplanetary travel.
