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We regularly build lots of heavy and complicated things, building them on Mars is going to be a problem. The biggest thing we've shipped there so far is the size of a small car.

The process of colonizing Mars should be that we realistically look at how much payload we can send up there, how much it costs, and then we find some adventurers willing to take risks to go.

I don't think it's unrealistic to say as a first approximation that the first people to land on Mars can expect a 10% chance of dying by just trying to get there, and 30% of dying early due to some complications, e.g. radiation exposure.

Those would have been fantastic odds when the New World was first colonized, or when soldiers landed on Omaha beach. Colonizing Mars needs to be looked at like that, not in terms of sending some government employee into a dangerous situation, as if though they're going to repair some machinery here on Earth.

Instead, NASA views their rules on safety as immutable, and is coming up with designs for habitats and ships to satisfy those rules, without ever having the discussion that perhaps those rules are unreasonable given the endeavour.