On the same theme, A City On Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (of SMBC fame) is a humorous yet an in-depth pragmatic look at why space colonization will suck.
Summarizing: space will kill you fast, moon will grind you down with the regolith, and Mars will poison you. There are some interesting bits about international/space laws and treaties too.
Wasn’t that convincing for me. The hard science elements seemed a bit cherry-picked and the later sections on governance and laws seem to want almost a wide spread agreement across multiple countries on every detail before people are allowed to go.
A multi-part review [1] is available which detailed more aspects quite well.
In short, people will go for a multitude of reasons (whether it is sensible or not).
+1, great book. Their recommended strategy is to 1) wait until technology improves and we have a better understanding of how to solve the fundamental problems of Mars colonization, then 2) go big and build a large settlement that has the scale to actually succeed.
Summarizing: space will kill you fast, moon will grind you down with the regolith, and Mars will poison you. There are some interesting bits about international/space laws and treaties too.