The initial investment would be significant yes, but Mars isn&#x27;t anywhere near as space constrained as much as the ISS.<p>Once you&#x27;ve got enough people and supplies, you can build farms, which means less food needs to be shipped out, freeing capacity for other goods. Presumably a lot of the infrastructure will be shipped out long before people are, so all they need to do is collect things from the supply drops, then assemble and expand.<p>Get the Mars colony to self sufficiency and the cost to Earth will trend to zero.