But people, a space station lacks the sort of long-term survivability we're going for. First, it has no magnetic protection, which would lead to us eventually being turned into a very overcooked pizza. Secondly, the lack of gravity means exercise, which I hate. And thirdly, It would make defense more difficult. Do you know how hard it is to put a hole in a space station? Riduculously easy.
A. How much of a magnetic field does Luna have? Besides, if the ISS can keep astronauts from turning into "overcooked pizza," why can't our space station?
B. Centrifuges, my fellow dwarf. I have this sketch of a space station for a story I am planning to write. Given sufficient energy--say, solar, supplemented by nuclear (fusion powered by gas-giant hydrogen or fission powered by asteroid-mined fissionables)--we could keep a fair amount of gravity. The one I designed had a gym at 1.2 G, to help optimize our not-bone-losing capabilities.
C. How will they shoot us if they can't find us? Besides, if we land on Olympus Mons or Luna, we're one nuke-toting warship from annihilation anyways. Space war, and even modern (read: Since Russia got nukes) war, tends to be an issue of "
Who fired their weapons first?" Especially since they will probably have enough nukes to wipe us off the face of whatever world we settle on and we definitely won't, our best defense is invisibility and mobility rather than toughness. Especially if we convert all (or almost all) of the sunlight hitting us into electricity and direct waste heat away from Earth, we'll be really tough to see.
As the main martian here, I would like to remind you that mars has magma, and ice, rendering water and heat concerns null. Furthermore, digging underground could allow for us to turtle for some time, especially if we are self-sustainable. Large solar energy farms could power it, as theres not much competition for space on mars. Greenhouses could be used to farm, as well as provide air.
Let's be honest: We'd need to dig MILES (or at least most of one) underground for us to have a whole community protected from nukes. And, anyways, those solar farms would be vulnerable to attack. One or two nukes there? There goes our power! Same with greenhouses. Frankly, our best bet on Mars would be to tunnel down and make extensive use of geothermal power, and using artificial lighting to grow plants. And Mars is about the worst place to initiate an attack from; we could send some sort of attack craft, but we'd be outnumbered, and they could send spaceships with nukes to wipe out vital infrastructure if we were careless. So, in short, it's Mars or war. Ironic, no?
Weapons: We first need to focus on hand-to-hand weaponry, in order to establish our base of operations on earth. That would allow us to far more easily move supplies there, and if we pick a small country, we shouldn't expect any sanctions or hostilities from the space-faring nations.
THEN, we start on our interplanetary weapons, in order to strike a devestating first strike on their space-capabilities.
"Hand-to-hand combat?" That's suicide for DWARVES! We live in an era of missile launchers, snipers, and nukes. If we charge into battle, outnumbered, using axes, we will have lost 99%+ of our militia AND have a tantrum spiral at home. And unless we take out vital little nations, the big nations will be willing and able to wipe us out to stop us from bombing Paris and DC.
That's why I'm recommending the TMIaHM method: Settle on Luna, wait for something to distract Earthlings, fling rocks at them (starting in uninhabited areas, move on to military targets, threaten civilian targets if we must), defend our homes (which we could make ideal for hand-to-hand combat), declare independence, become a major economic power, go from there. Okay, those last two steps weren't in Heinlein's book, but still. In short: Interplanetary warfare first, hand-to-hand for home defense. Also, consider some kind of thingy (space station?) with centrifuges providing greater than Earth-level gravity for training our soldiers. Then, they will be stronger than the groundhogs.
Remember, mars has air, protection from solar storms, isolation to prevent earth from getting curious, magma, ice, iron, and a coolness facter.
Air? Well, kinda. A few percent of Earth's atmosphere and mostly CO
2, and anyways we'd want to stay underground if we wanted to attack Earth. Protection from solar storms? I'll give you that over space stations. Isolation? Also makes pretty much any kind of warfare except "Fly to them and hope they don't shoot us out of the sky before we can attack" effectively impossible, which isn't a problem for Earth because of their much vaster pool of resources and population. Magma? Cool, but aside from geothermal power, lacking in practicality. Ice? On Luna too, and you can also mine water from some asteroids and/or recycle waste fluids. Iron? I'm 99% sure that Luna has it, and 100% that there's some in the asteroid belt, which is a good place for our hypothetical space station to hang out the more I think of it. Coolness? I assume you are talking about the temperature of your body if we decide to go for style over substance.