I honestly don't understand why Mars and not the Moon. They both have the same problems: weak gravity, no atmosphere worth speaking of, and limited life-sustaining resources. But the Moon is close. It's a logical step. Something goes wrong, you jettison, and in a couple of days you are orbiting Earth. On Mars, you die. (Unless you are Mark Watney, of course.) Our isolated habitats on Earth have all failed for one reason or another, and the author makes a good point that maybe we should have completely isolated and self-sufficient outposts on Antarctica or in the ocean first. Maybe then transfer those working ideas to the Moon, with the plan to make a much easier trip from the Moon to Mars, rather than trying to carry everything off Earth in one big, fat ship. Sadly the Trumplicans will defund all of these projects and put us into a technological dark age for the next decade-plus, so none of this will happen in my lifetime. Damnit.
And yet, before that, he stated that NASA's budget was oversized and largely wasted, and he plans to cut all Earth Science programs, and he's super-excited to outsource more work to the likes of SpaceX... so that he can cut the budget further. He has talked positively about space exploration, yes, but at every turn he also speaks of cutting NASA's excessive budget and outsourcing the majority of the work to contractors. So while he says "Yay Space!", he also says, "Boo NASA budget." Rubio and Cruz are working on legislation to undermine Trump's efforts to defund NASA with their NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2016, to protect particular high-profile projects within their states, but ... as with everything Trump, it can change 180 degrees between dinner and breakfast, if he starts tweeting out bullshit about Boeing again, for example...