I don't think I'm overthinking it because at least some of these things have to be accounted for.  That and you see these sorts of things happening all the time.  In this day and age you pretty much have to take into account certain ramifications.  A headline of "Baby Starves to Death in Space" because it didn't have baby food or formula or because it didn't get all the shots it needed would be a complete disaster for NASA.  Not to mention the fact it could have developmental problems because it didn't start growing up in a gravity enviroment.

While I'm thinking about it, you'd also have to have a contingenicy plan in place in the event that a crew member dies.  Anything can happen in two years and you don't want a decomposing body floating around with you.

The problem with settling and terraforming mars is that it has low gravity, very little atmosphere and little sunlight.  I wouldn't even think about a permanent settlement there at this time as the planet needs a ton of prep work if we don't want to have people living in a building all the time.

We could add mass by dropping a few hundred large asteroids on it.  If we drop them right we could knock Mars into a newer, closer orbit.  Gas for the atmosphere could be brought in from the other planets (not Earth).  Venus has tons of CO2, but that would need to be converted.

I think if we are going to be serious about going to mars permanently , there are a ton of things that need to be worked out first.  I don't think this is the kind of thing that can be done in only one generation with our current technology.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

 

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)