NEWS: People in mars?

UAE looks to Mars for STEM inspiration

The UAE Space Agency was formed as recently as 2014, and Dubai's Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center was established in 2015. The center has already successfully launched two home-grown satellites, and the Emirates is targeting Mars with plans for a probe in 2020 -- the Arab world's first mission to another planet. More ambitious still, there are plans to develop a human settlement on Mars by 2117.

At the World Government Summit in February 2017, the UAE previewed its vision of what that colony might look like. In November, their VR presentation was made available on YouTube.
In September, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, unveiled renders of Mars Science City, a $136 million simulation center planned for the desert outside Dubai.

The center will be covering 1.9 million square feet -- the largest project of its kind -- it will include  laboratories simulating the surface of Mars, agriculture testing areas and a museum. Much of it will be built using 3D printers.

The Emirates' space program is aware it's entering towards the back of the race.

Our primary target is having education and outreach," says Sarah Amiri, UAE minister of state for advanced sciences and science lead at the Emirates Mars Mission. "It's about building people, it's not about building buildings... It's creating people that are creative enough to stimulate your economy and to stimulate the growth of your entire nation."

In other words, space is a means to an end.
Afshin Molavi says "We sometimes think that the only way a space program is successful is when you have men on the moon planting a flag, or in the case of Dubai maybe rockets that land on Mars," he says. "But a space program is successful because of what it does on Earth."

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/07/middleeast/dubai-uae-mars-mission-global-gateway/index.html