First Steps of Colonization
Traveling through space to inhabit the moon or Mars is in our future, but it will have to be after some other advancements are made to make the trips of getting there and building the colonies that will be on them. We will actually have to first learn how to build the colonies on Earth before we can really think about building them in space.
The biggest problem with lunar and Martian colonization is that we are going to need building supplies. We are not going to be able to supply all of these building supplies from Earth either, and that is obvious. One thing that NASA is considering is that we find a way to mine materials from asteroids.
Why? Well, [there's no Lowe's or other hardware store on the moon or Mars (unless you've seen one)] the Earth is a long ways away from them, and if we were to ship all the supplies from Earth to build the colonies, it would cost a huge amount money in the supplies themselves, and the cost of the extra fuel to lift them off the ground. But if we were to use asteroids to supply to the majority of the materials needed, we wouldn't have to waste as much fuel getting the supplies of the ground because the gravity isn't as strong on the asteroids, and the supplies themselves wouldn't cost as much because there wouldn't be as high as a demand for them because personally owned companies couldn't afford to send a ship out to mine the materials.
Lunar Colonization
The moon is the closest spatial body to Earth. It is the first choice humans have made to colonize. The moon would be relatively easy to colonize because it is close to the Earth and has a lot of materials that could be used to build and keep up the colony so we don't have to send all of the materials by ship there.
Martian Colonization
The colonization of Mars would be a lot harder. It is further away than the moon, and because of that, we would have to set up mining bases on asteroids between Earth and Mars that would supply the majority of the materials needed to build the colonies. Mars would be easier to keep up though, because it has more water in the form of ice than the moon and its soil composition is mostly iron meaning that once there, there could be mining operations being performed on Mars.
The colonization of space is most definitely in our future. And the best way to get there is a path that will have many other benefits in it. If we were to just get a mission that we decided that we are going to send people to live on a colony on the moon with all the supplies they could need for a year going with them, it will cost the country(-ies) a huge amount of money to get the materials and send the materials in fuel. It's a good thing, though, that our government knows better than this [I know that comes as a gigantic surprise, but believe me, it's true]. The US government knows that they couldn't afford a large colonization program. It would just cost too much [with a capital "T" "O" "O" {Space} "M" "U" "C" "H"]! The future of space colonization is most definitely in our future and possibly real soon.
