[stryker7001]

Heres what I'm thinking. Since we have money, we test test test to make sure things work. Then each developed nation usa, Russia, china, India, Japan, UAE, Canada, ESA etc with a space program launches 1 a day for a total of 30 days. That would allow 30 shipping containers to arrive within days of each other. The first few are redundant life support/escape/return, the next few allow you to start building, the last few allow you to grow. In the meantime we are building and launching as fast as we can. you have to think ahead by 9 months and have everything planned out as best as you can with redundancy. So scaling, teamwork, redundancy and thinking ahead. Also money, lots of money.

[sitkack]

Good sequence for a movie, but most likely we will pack a bunch of starships fill of supplies and land them, leaving two available for emergency return, the other N will shuttle more supplies to Mars. We can test the landing and relaunch as many times as necessary using automated systems. By the time humans land they can checkin at the front desk.

I think a base on one of the Mars moons would be nice. You can build a radiation shield and have a nice place to store your stuff. Maybe some fuel could be extracted from the regolith.

[fogihujy]

Well, that solution is also perfectly applicable if we were to colonize a desert, or Antarctica, or the ocean floor. Still, all of those are easier than colonizing Mars even if we throw unprecedented amounts of resources at the problem.