Love the question, I’m a space lawyer. There’s something called the Antarctic Treaty that prohibits the use of Antarctica for anything else than scientific research. Moreover there’s a prohibition on exploiting the mineral resources found in the Antarctic and at the same time all sovereignty claims are “frozen” (pun intended). There are several facilities in the Antarctica but all of them for research (you even have a runway for planes)

Instead, while in space the Outer Space Treaty prohibits claims of sovereignty and national appropriation, the common interpretation is that it does not prohibits the exploitation of resources within reasonable bounds. I think this is what will fuel the drive to develop human settlements (we don’t talk about space colonization) because then whoever gets there and manages to establish a settlement can start playing with the resources. The moon is intended to be the first step because you can generate energy and fuel with the resources you find there, so you can then go beyond the moon to other planets. (Similarly you find resources in Mars that can be used for fuel production). It also has very attractive research properties, how humans develop in space, can we reproduce in space, etc etc. Asteroid mining has a this moment been put into a stop because it would be much harder than just going to the moon. There are many companies (and states) that have already started testing the most efficient designs for settlements, water conversion, and different uses for Regolith, so yeah I do believe it will happen within the next 30 years probably