Expedition to Mars ... Is it a dead end?

I am surprised to see the vigorous activity in preparation for the flight to Mars. No, by itself, the activity incidentally brings some benefits, but the goal ... The goal is obviously unattainable, at least in this scenario.

It creates a steady impression that someone deliberately pushes mankind into deliberately dead-end roads and in every possible way blocks real options.

(By the way: I would like to raise the same question about sabotage when discussing ways to develop energy.)
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(By the way: no one writes or speaks about this, but there is a real reason to leave the planet: the Earth’s atmosphere is constantly changing, hydrogen accumulates on the Earth due to vital activity, the conversion of active oxygen into inert water occurs, the planet ceases to be habitable.)

To prove that in the near future the colonization of Mars is a utopia, I probably will not, this is so clear.
For the massive development of the earthlings still do not have enough resources, and individual expeditions gut the budget, devour the resources and ... Well, they already flew to the moon, and what?

Meanwhile, these funds could be used to develop space stations directly on Earth’s orbit. Raising a sufficient amount of equipment into orbit, you can create a city in orbit, with artificial gravity and a fully closed life-support cycle. City in space with normal conditions of existence.

Raising tons of disposable equipment into space so that all this could become deadly space debris is just silly. You must not fly into space, you must master it.

Such a station could not only be a ballast for the economy, but make a profit, become a good investment, a stimulus for economic development, a place to compete, give purpose and meaning, change the psychology of people and thereby solve many contradictions.

This is not only space tourism and research, there are quite a few industries that it is expedient to organize in space. For example, the separation of isotopes or other substances, the growth of crystals. A deep vacuum, the absence of gravity is an indispensable technological tool.

A huge station can afford a full-fledged atomic reactor. Energy abundance can not only ensure complete autonomy, but also seriously save the jet mass during maneuvers through the use of more advanced engines.

This station could solve the problem of orbital debris. Tugs with nuclear installations could collect faulty devices for disposal and repair. Withdrawing a nuclear tug from the Earth is extremely dangerous, but it is much more sensible to just have a fleet of such tugs constantly in space. Therefore, they need to be built, maintained, repaired. Production in space is impossible without a city in which people live permanently.

Inevitably, a second city will appear in orbit after the first city, and then another. The space will again become missed and the station cities will crawl around the near-solar space, fly to the asteroid belts, get to other planets and further to the Kuiper belt, and maybe even further. The time will come for the exploration of other planets.

Agree, where it is more promising to develop another planet, having in orbit a huge city, thousands of people, manufacturing, hospitals. True, I am afraid that by that time a generation of people with a different psychology will be born, people for whom space will become home, and they simply will not want to go back to the planets.

And then what is Mars? Yes, just sow life on him, bacteria and fungi. Probably, millions of years will pass before Mars has its own biology, its own life, which in its form is not at all similar to that on earth, but still life.