One way trip to Mars!

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by eddie

This is not a trip I would want to go on. I mean, what could go wrong? If they were months along after launch, and they had an explosion on the spacecraft like they did with Apollo 13, that turned it into a crippled spacecraft, what do you do? You just can't do a free return trip like they did on Apollo 13, way to far out there for that!

Back-ups. The Apollo capsules were very early space technology after all. It would be best really to make a bigger ship than the Dragon-X system, but since money is an issue here, I guess they'll just have to hope it doesn't go wrong. After all, plenty of people got lost at sea whilst exploring back in the day.
Another thing that can be done is to send unmanned craft and robots to Mars to get things ready for the settlers when they arrive. In theory they could have a few pre-fab buildings ready to go when they arrive.