This is way off, and reflective of a view of space exploration of the Apollo style rather than actual colonization like what will happen on Mars.
The first people to go to Mars may be scientists and explorers, but the second wave will be a very different kind of people. That group will have the job of building a technologically advanced, industrialized, self-sufficient civilization on Mars. That is no small task, nor is it one we have a simple template for. The people who will be drawn to it won't be the "science is f'ing cool!" spectators, nor will they even be hardcore research scientists. They'll be hyper-competent workaholics and overachievers. They'll be people with broad expertise in multiple subjects who just enjoy getting stuff done. The sheer amount of work ahead of them will be mind-boggling. But by the same token, the amount that they can get done, what they will be able to achieve will be equally mind-boggling.
Every single day they'll wake up and they'll have a hundred lifetimes of truly challenging work ahead of them. And every single night they'll go to bed having made real, material, significant progress on advancing Martian colonization and making human civilization multi-planetary. Most days they'll do something that was never done on Mars before. They'll build something that will have a tangible impact on what is possible in the future on Mars, and on many other people's lives. They won't just be spending their days reading facebook and occasionally making a git pull-request, they'll be building greenhouses, they'll be farming, they'll be making habitats, and they'll be building up all of the industrial infrastructure to do that. They'll be mining ice, and iron ore, and sand, etc. They'll be figuring out how to setup iron smelting operations. How to make plastic out of methane. How to make concrete on Mars. How to build habitats with the maximal contribution of Martian resources that are safe and robust. They'll be min/maxing like crazy, and innovating like crazy. They'll be spending a crap-ton of time in shops using machine tools. And they will constantly see the fruits of their labor, day by day, hour by hour.
They'll be able to look around at their growing colony and think to themselves "I built this". It will be like the ultimate start-up experience on steroids. Some of them might find it overwhelming, but I doubt many of them will find it boring, they won't have time.
The first people to go to Mars may be scientists and explorers, but the second wave will be a very different kind of people. That group will have the job of building a technologically advanced, industrialized, self-sufficient civilization on Mars. That is no small task, nor is it one we have a simple template for. The people who will be drawn to it won't be the "science is f'ing cool!" spectators, nor will they even be hardcore research scientists. They'll be hyper-competent workaholics and overachievers. They'll be people with broad expertise in multiple subjects who just enjoy getting stuff done. The sheer amount of work ahead of them will be mind-boggling. But by the same token, the amount that they can get done, what they will be able to achieve will be equally mind-boggling.
Every single day they'll wake up and they'll have a hundred lifetimes of truly challenging work ahead of them. And every single night they'll go to bed having made real, material, significant progress on advancing Martian colonization and making human civilization multi-planetary. Most days they'll do something that was never done on Mars before. They'll build something that will have a tangible impact on what is possible in the future on Mars, and on many other people's lives. They won't just be spending their days reading facebook and occasionally making a git pull-request, they'll be building greenhouses, they'll be farming, they'll be making habitats, and they'll be building up all of the industrial infrastructure to do that. They'll be mining ice, and iron ore, and sand, etc. They'll be figuring out how to setup iron smelting operations. How to make plastic out of methane. How to make concrete on Mars. How to build habitats with the maximal contribution of Martian resources that are safe and robust. They'll be min/maxing like crazy, and innovating like crazy. They'll be spending a crap-ton of time in shops using machine tools. And they will constantly see the fruits of their labor, day by day, hour by hour.
They'll be able to look around at their growing colony and think to themselves "I built this". It will be like the ultimate start-up experience on steroids. Some of them might find it overwhelming, but I doubt many of them will find it boring, they won't have time.