Apparently it takes less resources to supply astronauts on Mars and keep them alive for the rest of their natural lives, than it would take to return them to the earth.
Colonies - even the ones in the new world centuries ago - ARE one-way trips. You’re “sending people to their deaths” only in the sense that they’d die of old age and the usual other causes, decades after arriving.
Of course that’s for a realistic Mars one-way program, not this little fantasy.
