It is worth stressing just how dangerous setting up a Mars colony will be. Less so once a bridgehead has been established but not for the fainthearted even then. It is not so much that this is terra incognita like the new world in which Columbus ended up. Mars will be the best mapped and analysed new territory which mankind has ever settled. Nor is it the quality of ships. The Santa Maria was the product of generations of the development of shipbuilding skills (though she was still wrecked, leaving Columbus to return in the Nina, an even smaller ship). But the ships that go to Mars will be the product of an advanced technological civilisation, rigorously tested and with extensive redundancy built in. It is the extreme harshness of the martian environment and the sheer complexity of the mission that underlies the great peril of the enterprise. The number of discrete technologies and mechanisms that must work nearly perfectly to achieve success will be unprecedented.
The dangers of solar radiation and medical emergency, of serious spacecraft component failure or Apollo 13 style explosion, on the voyage out. Orbital complexities and pinpoint landing navigation, heatshield and rocket assisted touchdown, for the martian landing. Life-support and re-cycling systems, power supply, and pressurised containment, throughout transit and during the continuing settlement phase. These are just some of the broad brush contingencies. The devil is in the detail. All the subsystems and components which must not fail or must have reliable back-up built in will be hard even to tally up. There is a lot more to be said about each of the stages of flight, landing and construction on the surface. Hydroponic rearing of crops and soil farming are other critical subjects in themselves. But for a first post on the general issue of risk, this may stand as a preliminary sketch that underlines just how very brave colonists are going to have to be. The warrior rather than the worrier spirit is going to be in high demand.
To return for a moment to the Nina (pronounced Neenyah), since I have mentioned her here. She was Columbus's smallest ship but also his favourite. Nina means Girl in English. I think she too is a good candidate for the name of a Mars-bound spacecraft (but then I am just another rather hopeful romantic!)
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