Mars hits you with CT-scan-level radiation every 5 days and boils your blood without a suit—yet SpaceX’s Starship and NASA target crews in the 2030s. Perseverance is caching samples while Ingenuity proves flight, MOXIE made oxygen, and lava tubes plus regolith shielding might keep colonists alive. The bet: endure -81°F, 38% gravity, months-long dust storms and a 26‑minute comm delay to become a multiplanetary species before Earth’s next catastrophe.