Colonizing the asteroid Ceres

Several factors support the idea.

1. It has plenty of water
2. It is in the asteroid belt, meaning it is in the neighborhood of the other asteroids
3. It's in the sweet spot for mining metal asteroids, which could prove lucrative
4. It has enough sun to use solar power
5. It is between Mars and Jupiter's moons, making it a way station between both
6. The gravity well isn't as deep, meaning it won't need as much fuel to land or take off
7. More frequent launch windows to Ceres from Earth, as opposed to Earth to Mars.

Some thought has been given to the idea here.

Here's someone who wants to go to Ceres first before going to Mars.

This forum discusses colonizing Ceres before the moon.  More discussion on the wiki here.

Update:

Some of the discussion talks about landing and taking off the asteroid using rocket engines.  This is wasteful of fuel.  Here's a way to do it--- use a Hunter type gas gun to launch the ice into space.  Muzzle velocity from a military type gun is twice the escape velocity of Ceres, so you won't need that much velocity to get into space.

The ice could be collected and processed at a space station in orbit around Ceres.  It would also require transport to and from the station.   You'd need a big tanker because the trip is long.

In addition to space hardware, the project would entail setting up the hardware on the surface of Ceres.  As well as the gas gun, you'd need to mine the water from the asteroid itself.  This would need hardware for that.  So, the main challenge here is to get the hardware into place on the surface of Ceres, and in orbit, so it can mine the water and then transport it to space.  From there, it can go to where it's needed.

Update:

Here's the delta-v's in a chart that includes Ceres.  The delta-v looks daunting, so a manned trip will be challenging with today's tech.  According to this chart, and assuming I'm reading it right, a trip to Ceres would require 4 km/sec more in delta-v than a Mars trip.

However, if you don't launch from Earth, but from the moon, or from a Lagrange point, the delta-v becomes much smaller as you don't need to get out of that deep gravity well.  It should also be noted that the trip includes both ways.  You can use aerobraking to slow down the Earth part of the trip, which also saves a lot of delta-v.

Update:

Getting to Ceres is the biggest problem.  Once you are there, you could land a lot of equipment there without the need for a lot of propellant.  You may achieve some rather dramatic mass fractions, if my calculations are anywhere near correct.  Something like 90% if you use LH2/LOX.
In order to pull off such a project, there would need to be an infrastructure in place.  Preferably, several refueling stations, viz

• LEO.  This would enable the project to avoid lifting off without all the fuel for the whole trip.  Only that necessary to get to orbit.  Once there, refill to get to next destination.  You could supplement what came from the Moon with gases harvested from the edge of space.
• Lagrange point--- one of the Earth Moon ones, perhaps one could double up for service from the Moon's surface.  It could transfer from L1 to L4 or L5 and top off.
• Mars orbit.  Or at one of the moons.  Top off there with fuel from the surface of Mars or from the moons themselves.  A caveat to this one is that it may not help that much.

The idea is to minimize masses that have to escape deep gravity wells.  This would enable smaller rockets to be employed.

Update:

This is part 3 of a series.  Part 2 is here, Part 1 is here.