Yup, the only real way we could ever set up a long term habitat on mars would be to do it underground to shield from the radiation. The only way we could maybe justify the huge pain in the ass it would be to stay there long term, is if we treated it as a purposeful scientific mission with a goal of looking for signs of (potentially ancient) life, and accepted that there’s nothing else useful we could really do there.
Whether this is worth it is questionable. What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars.
You could also ionize particles from the surface of Phobos and then accelerate them so they create a plasma torus along its orbit. This would create a magnetic field but we'll probably already be venturing outside of the solar system by the time we could do it.
We could plausibly land a human on Mars within our lifetimes and they wouldn't immediately die. To get Venus to that point would take minimum hundreds, more likely thousands of years. Which is neat, but between the two it implies something about the better place to start.
>> What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars.
> Granted it doesn’t look like low-hanging fruit but never, ever is a very long time.
I believe the applicable qualifier here is, "on the surface of the planet." And since this would relegate any long-term occupation to be subterranean, the GP's assertion is difficult to refute.
“If we don’t kill ourselves first” is doing all the heavy lifting here. I’m not convinced that more time helps us, given that civilization itself is very fragile and we are continually a moment away from nuclear holocaust ending everything we’ve worked to achieve. And that’s not even bringing up the damage we’re doing to the environment we derive all this prosperity from.
I wouldn't say never. All the elements necessary to sustain life are present. With a certain level of tech and energy production it becomes viable. Not any time soon, though.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars