Mars and Island One

Mike Combs wrote .........
The Mars portion of the plan is much further out in time, and not nearly
that specific. And in fact, that's a good thing. The argument is that
we need to accumulate more experience coming back and forth from the
moon before we can even do any intelligent or informed mission planning
for Mars. i.e. What we're fixing to learn from the next steps back to
the moon will help us better understand what's needed to get to Mars.
And I tend to agree.

The problem I feel boils down to whether or not there will be some kind of agricultural activity in space. If any agricultural activity is planned to support even say 20 people, very large space habs will be required. With the available resources - during the next 50 years let us say - will it be easier to set up such habs on Moon and Mars or have free floating complexes? My suspicion is, it will be easier to set up such habs on Moon or Mars. And since there is more likelihood of obtaining water freely on Mars, are the Mars enthusiasts right after all? Mars also has gravity of 0.38 of that on Earth - very important. Free floating structures will require radii of about a mile to achieve significant g levels. Are O'Neil type structures too futuristic for the immediate future? Perhaps they are the butterflies that will emerge after the egg, caterpillar and pupa stages!!!

Regards
Selvaraj