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RE: Why I will not be going to Mars... Its too small
Water, CO2, Methane ice in the soil I can accept, hydrogen ice I'm not so sure, upper atmospheric Hydrogen is what would be stripped away by the solar wind and a thick layer of hydrogen is what is needed to shield from cosmic bombardments.
So long as we can breathe the air, radiation is a secondary concern. Buildings can be designed with integrated shielding, colonists can wear wide brimmed hats lined with lead fibers, etc.
Also most likely due to the enormous cost of sending prefabricated habitat modules to the Martian surface from Earth, most of the living space will be pressurized underground tunnels and caverns. Radiation isn't a concern underground.
The main problem as I see it is where to get enough greenhouse gases to get a feedback loop started on Mars. I've seen serious proposals to just nuke the fuck out of it in order to vaporize the polar ice caps. That would cause temporary warming and, it is hoped, enough of an atmosphere released from the soil to build upon.
Perhaps I am just too skeptical whenever simplistic solutions (not yours...the ones in the media)are proposed to highly complex problems
No worries, I don't think there is such a thing as "too skeptical". Someone else mentioned Musk advocating for the "nuke the shit out of Mars" plan. You and I agree that is probably too simplistic and will have undesirable, unanticipated effects.
I don't claim to have all the answers. I mostly just came here because you replied to a few people saying the atmosphere would bleed away soon after being generated. That's not the case. Whether it's possible to regenerate one at all with current tech though, that's still a big question mark.
I've heard of the idea of siphoning atmosphere from Venus, but if we had the level of tech necessary to do that, we wouldn't need planets to live on.
Well actually what I did reply was
LOL on the Venus comment...