OTOH, most seventeenth-century colonists got on ships expecting their existing knowledge of agriculture, medicine, construction, diplomacy, warfare, etc. to be as applicable in the new world as it was in the old.
But we already know that Mars can't naturally sustain human life, and that colonists will need to build and maintain self-contained systems to grow food, clean water, recycle/dispose of waste, protect them from the elements, etc. And we already know how Mars differs from Earth in available solar energy and atmospheric composition; we understand in advance what resources might be extracted from Martian rock and soil.
So we can prototype Martian survival systems in advance, and simulate them, prior to actually going to Mars, something that seventeenth-century colonists not only lacked the means to do, but which likely never even occurred to most of them in the first place.
I'm sure there will still be "unknown unknowns" for the colonists to deal with, but I doubt that the risk exposure will be quite as life-or-death as the Jamestown or Roanoke colonists' was.
But we already know that Mars can't naturally sustain human life, and that colonists will need to build and maintain self-contained systems to grow food, clean water, recycle/dispose of waste, protect them from the elements, etc. And we already know how Mars differs from Earth in available solar energy and atmospheric composition; we understand in advance what resources might be extracted from Martian rock and soil.
So we can prototype Martian survival systems in advance, and simulate them, prior to actually going to Mars, something that seventeenth-century colonists not only lacked the means to do, but which likely never even occurred to most of them in the first place.
I'm sure there will still be "unknown unknowns" for the colonists to deal with, but I doubt that the risk exposure will be quite as life-or-death as the Jamestown or Roanoke colonists' was.