1. Making life multiplanetary (potential great filter)
2. Great way to discover challanges to our long term survival changes
3. Establishing a base on another planet will drive technological advancements
4. Beter understanding of the origins of life
5. Potential to vastly improve energy consumption
6. First step towards terraforming
7. Only realistic scenario for us to see manned extraterrestial missions in our lifetime

Check out chapter 3 of the 2013 decadal survey, as well as big chunks of the 2022 decadal survey

Thank you for the replies! Makes sense.
My impression is that they're investing enormous resources into this exploration, but I've never really been able to grasp what exactly it is they're trying to achieve. It's truly impressive to see what the've done with the rovers, among other things.

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If you read KSR’s Mars Trilogy, big corporations would have interests in resource extraction. Imagine a pristine planet where there’s never been thousands of years of human mining including 200 years of industrial scale extraction. Dunno whether mars would have ever had the processes to concentrate metals and other strategic minerals in deposits like there are on Earth; but it should be imagined as a consideration if the investment to create a mars colony is to be funded