Interesting point. I am responding in a plane 37,000 feet up, using a smartphone. That was unimagined in 2008, just 11 years ago.

Perhaps Dr. Aldrin’s dreams will come true in only 11 more.

The Mars Homestead Project has done lots of work on producing the equipment to produce the resources to build large pleasant habitats, greenhouses, and such to support a quickly growing population on Mars bringing to Mars little more the a starting set of equipment and then little more than the people.

To fill Elon Musk of SpaceX plan to send a million people to Mars we should start with a half dozen people with a good start of processing equipment, and then try to double that each alignment. They should be sent to Mars with a small spinning habitat like cycler that also grows food. The first Mars cycler ship might not have all that.

Larger cyclers should mostly be made out of materials already in orbits. Of course the lowest fuel need would be out of some asteroids between Earth and Mars. Some would need hardly a nudge to put them into that orbit. Lunar, might be easier get to, to process, but I think the best at is to process in Mars orbits, mostly using the tiny Moons of Mars. For many other reasons I see many advantages to develop and process using Phobos, the very close moon or Mars. It can be a great solution to many problems for a settlement on Mars as well as a great boon to transportation for Mars and beyond.