I've been looking at Mars tonight, using the ETX90 (1,250 mm focal length) with a 9.7 mm eyepiece and a barlow 2x and as Mars is so high in the sky, more details than ever can be seen!

I'm no more convinced humans will go to Mars using the present day existing propulsion technology.
If the onward trip is shorten to 2 months (rather than 6) all kinds of win win factors become apparent.
The trip can start later, arrive earlier and spend more than a month on Mars (and certainly less than a year and a half with no choice but to wait for that long). If the trip is shorten, it would allow for more testing of the systems (because there'd be less time between flights), a longer than a month but not that long stay on the planet, relative to the trip duration.
A shorter mission means less exposure to solar radiation, less weightlessness endured, more media attention, less mass for food, water, air, room inside the vehicle, more freedom for time management . Clearly, the trip should be shortened!

Another aspect is the novelty: if more time is taken for the manned mission to Mars preparations, then more robots (which are getting more sophisticated also) will go there, removing a large part of the red planet's mysteries and the romance of the trip. People will say: we've been there already (with the robots) just as they said so after the Moon.

I doubt very much astronauts could see anything outside , because of the smallness of the planets, the dimness of the stars, the brightness of reflected light or even the light inside the cabin itself. And besides, they'd be careful not to expose one side to the sun and the other away from it for too long. They'll only see something at the very beginning of the trip or while close to Mars.

Science is for the machines, as Larry K says but I also doubt Mars will be used as a second Earth.
That's also because of a time factor: the human species is not meant for any other place than Earth or a world with 1G artificial gravity, at least for a long stay. Perhaps, later, some machines or cyborgs will do it but they will have adapted to the various places they'd go to and hence have become strangers to Earthlings.

No colonies, but short trips, returning back home, this will be the full expression of man's quest for more freedom.

Raoul