Thats a long note, lol. I kinda agree you on many terms and disagree on few. Conquering the moon should be the first but the fact that it is just moon kinda makes it boring. But Mars kinda seems promising, provided that is has water and under certain circumstances plants could possibly be grown.
Nonetheless, your point of view is cool...
Mars really doesn't have anything to offer. Its atmosphere is very thin and has lost a great deal of Hydrogen to the solar wind (something Earth's much stronger magnetic field keeps in check). Venus is in a similar predicament, but is actually a better prospect for long-term terraforming than Mars.
Venus has two major challenges - hydrogen (can be supplied by a stellar-faring species), and the electromagnetic field (necessary for protecting from solar winds that strip away hydrogen).
Mars has low-gravity challenges along with substantially less solar radiation and tectonic activity. Combined with an overall thin atmosphere and the challenges with retaining an atmosphere with the pressures of those seen on Mount Everest make the idea of using it for agricultural purposes challenging.
Venus could be used for the same purpose far more readily. The main challenge with Venus is the lack of hydrogen for the formation of water. There's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere and precipitates - so that's not a difficulty.
Though the higher surface temperatures, caustic environment, and atmospheric pressures raise their own challenges for going about some kind of terraforming process.
Though terraforming is a very costly endeavor with questionable end benefits.
Consider that just about any place you'd want to terraform... now envision the technological, industrial, and biological understanding and means that must go into being able to turn that planet into something we can live on.
Much of that same technology and means can be directly applied to taking only what you need from various planets in the surroundings and putting them together in space to form structures that are optimized for human life - where pressure, humidity, gas ratios, temperature, etc can be set at will. Further - organic compounds could be exposed to optimal amounts of solar radiation in specialized compartments tailored to the specifics of their anatomy.
Colonizing other planets for the purpose of setting up "a second home for humans" is just not realistic. If you were to terraform a whole planet - then you might be able to do that (and the process would likely take centuries and incomprehensible amounts of resources).... but it would mostly be for the sake of doing it (though quite a few people will do such things simply for the sake of having done it).
Limited colonization for the purpose of industrial exploitation and expansion is about as far as we'll likely see. By the time technology catches up to the point where "a colony on mars" is possible - it will be far easier to strip a bunch of CO2 from the atmosphere of Venus or Mars, some water from one of the moons on Jupiter, and put it together onto a sort of "Demi-Halo" that has seen a lot of its smaller constituent parts constructed on Luna (our moon).
Going to the moon isn't "boring."
It just depends upon what we are going there to do.
Keep in mind - the 'idea' back 50 years ago was that we were going to be setting up industry on the moon in the 80s and 90s. And, arguably - we could have done it.
With some focused effort and solid investing - it could be done today (though it would be about five to ten years before we started to see any kind of product returning from the endeavor - and about twenty five years before the 'space economy' would really start gaining independence. So it's a hard sell when you're talking budgets in the hundreds of millions per year just to get a small team of 12 people onto the moon to start setting things up (or developing the automation to send machines to do it - which is my favored route... send the machines to handle the basics until the people you send up there are able to deploy an atmosphere and set up shop for a few months).
It takes a longer term perspective and dedication to the cause.
That's why attempts to set up carnivals on the Moon, Mars, or at the edge of the atmosphere are not ever really going to develop a serious space industry. Sure - you could run a small, high-tech operation for those purposes and people who simply had nothing better to do with their money would be happy to indulge in space tourism...
But what interested the royal families of Europe in a direct ocean route to "The East?" Trade - access to new resources and new markets for their own.
Industry drove the "Age of Exploration." Or, rather, the pursuit of it. The American colonists found vast forests and became -the- manufacturer of ships though the 1700s. Other areas saw substantial agricultural development with cotton and tobacco being incredibly valuable.
It took a generation or more before the initial investments into western exploration (and the follow-up exploitation endeavors) to begin to pay off for those who invested in them. But, at the same time, the investment was not as extreme. Ships that could sail across the ocean were not really cheap - but they were relatively standard ships and the people aboard could arrive at their destination surrounded by resources that could be used to support their existence.
Not all of that holds for space exploration, obviously - where the investment is an extreme one for a very long term objective. Further - it's unlikely that the 'boom' of expansion will not be seen with the first factory on the moon - it will be when the company that built the factory on the moon uses that factory to build a large research station in orbit.
There are two tiers of investment before much interest is even going to be shown by the free market in 'simple' space travel. The factory might see some interest from firms that want to own their own research station (to rent out to companies) or that see an immediate, beneficial application... but interest in space manufacturing won't really take off until practical intra-stellar travel on the human time scale comes online.
That satisfies the three major criteria for economic growth: A resource, a means to exploit it, and a means to transport it. Once all three have been demonstrated to be practical - investors will be easy to come by - the people who go into space to exploit it will bring the rest of the economy with them as time and practicality allow. At first - it will be like many jobs in Alaska (an extreme environment)... people go to work there for a relatively short duration of time (maybe four years) and return with enough money to pay for school, a house, and several other wants outright... and still have sizable cash reserves.
Then you'll get the merchants... and some of the service/commercial industries will follow... until you have people and their families relocating to these foreign regions. Someone will get the bright idea to build "orbiting cities" - and we'll see that idea take off (particularly as tensions between governments and their people increase).
Give me 10% of what we spend on feeding people who are doing nothing but drugs and impregnating/getting impregnated... and I could define the next era of humanity.
But people and governments are horrible at planning and educated investment/spending. When you put them in charge of things, you get Detroit.
