What's just as good as going to Mars and building a Mars base? Building it on Earth. At least that is what the U.A.E. thinks.

United Arab Emirates to build Martian mini-city

Indoor ski resorts. Underwater hotel suites. Cloud-brushing mega-skyscrapers. High-end shopping malls the size of 50 football fields. Leave it to the United Arab Emirates, land of superlative everything, to lead the charge when building the world's largest - and, predictably, flashiest - Mars colony simulation.

 From article (Indoor ski resorts. Underwater hotel suites. Cloud-brushing mega-skyscrapers. High-end shopping malls the size of 50 football fields. Leave it to the United Arab Emirates, land of superlative everything, to lead the charge when building the world’s largest — and, predictably, flashiest — mock Mars colony.

When complete, the 1.9-million-square-foot Martian mini-city will give scientists a “viable and realistic” taste of what human colonization of the Red Planet might be like.

News of the so-called Mars Science City, which comes equipped with a price tag of $140 million (U.S.) and will be located in the Emirati desert on the outskirts of Dubai, comes just months after the country announced ambitious and not entirely surprising plans to colonize Mars by the year 2117.)

Me, "It may seem like a crazy idea, but it may have many useful benefits: From, allowing people to experience what living on Mars might be like, (So they can make the ultimate decision whether to go) to training crews to deal with the life they will live on Mars. Sure, it seems like a tourist trap but it may have real world uses by space agencies from all countries.

In fact I am surprised we don't have something like this here in the U.S. The closest would be Biosphere 2, which isn't really a space colony, more of an enclosed arboretum.
If NASA is going to spend money on going to the Moon and Mars they should have something like this here in the U.S (We have all that desert land in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, etc, setting something up wouldn't be too hard, it would just cost money) to trainee crews and allow the public (acting like space tourists) to participate."

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