Well, I don't agree with the artificial gravity! Too complicated and going to space is about weightlessness in the first place, after all.
To travel to Mars: do it quickly with nuclear energy rather than slowly and spinning all the time.

Stephen Baxter's Titan starts the plot with the destruction, at landing, of Columbia.
Then the end of the space stion, the shuttle fleet.
But an idea comes up: let's go to Titan as life had just been found there.
However, the few who get there realize that in the mean time, the Earth had been hit by a large asteroid. Gone was civilization on Earth, and a dim hope for a better mankind...on Titan.

Frankly, if it's about chosing between a space station involving hundreds of astronauts (and dozens of countries) in LEO or none of this but ,instead, 4 astronauts in a 3 year long trip to Mars...I'm not favoring the Mars trip.

Raoul