[lopsotronic]

Depends on how you define "permanent" but the closed ecological systems (CES) problem is nowhere near solved.

Best case all the Martians get eaten alive by their own skin fungus and/or bacteria in a generation or two. There'll be a collapse in the personal or macro biome - biological systems have Kalmagorov complexity in a vertical like direction.

Shorter term, drawing from actual ISS problems, you get really weird and durable "biofilm" ecosystems sometimes literally exploding since there's nothing up there eating any of the material shedding from the crew and their food and poop and whatever else. Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium (skin commensals) and Bacillus species dominate surfaces. Aspergillus, Penicillium, Cladosporium, and Rhodotorula are some of the fungi. The Japanese Kibo module sampling found communities that shifted noticeably year over year. Thicker biofilms with novel "column-and-canopy" architectures not seen on Earth; probably related, E. coli and Salmonella studies showed increased virulence gene expression in microgravity. There's a Russian paper documenting 234 species recovered from Mir, including fungi actively degrading polymer materials. And this is on an orbital station after a few decades, constantly supplied, wiped down with sterilizers and lysol regularly, with individuals able to deorbit when they feel like it.

[dotancohen]

So there is a problem to be solved. Great!

The history of human spaceflight is pretty much: Problem -> Difficult to find solution -> Solution leads to better spaceflight -> Solution leads to better life for humans on Earth. Then repeat that cycle for each new problem.

Think of the new medicine and hospital protocols that are waiting to be developed as biologists explore the solution to this problem.

[lopsotronic]

Couldn't agree more. But I'd recommend solving the problem before shooting ten men and ten women into the Martian regolith forever and telling them to make babies.

Alternatively, it's not the scale of problem you try and solve fifteen timeslipped minutes and (at least) eighteen months away. We're not even sure what the shape of a solution even looks like, apart from "Generic Future Technology Tree Numbers 4 through 90". Mastery of bioengineering would probably fix it, but it would need to be desktop science, like 3d printing. We are not anywhere near that - mostly because we don't have things like "generic bioreactors" that can grow organisms like a universal womb/seedbed/strata/media.

I recognize human advancement comes with sacrifice. But human advancement also comes with prudent decisions like "don't built the village in the lava".

[Recurecur]

Indeed, and that’s why we’re starting sensibly with a lunar colony…

I think you’re also exaggerating those issues considerably.