Are you trying to be sarcastic? Because with the current technology, even if we do have manned mission to mars, if a meteor wipes out earth there will be no living humans on mars either. With the current technology any human mission to mars can only be on mars for a very limited time and will rely on earth for all of their resources. Thus, if a meteor wipes out earth, any mission to mars will die too.

If you want to build a sustainable mars presence, a manned mission to mars is not going to do it. We have to find a way to use resources on mars to sustain a human presence. That will require a lot of research into mars resources, a lot of engineering to build mars factories etc. I am not sure if this is possible at all but if it is, it is best done by starting with robotic missions. A robot can spend a year on mars looking for materials that can be used to make bricks (for example). A human, even if we can get him on mars, will probably have to go back in hours.

> I am not sure if this is possible at all but if it is, it is best done by starting with robotic missions.

It is very hard to imagine a self-sustaining Mars colony. You face two huge hurdles: a very thin atmosphere (average surface pressure 0.6% of Earth's) and low gravity, which sounds great until you consider the correlated long-term health problems.

Even if we could somehow import massive amounts of air and water to Mars, it would rapidly evaporate away and be lost to space. We may be able to establish science stations on Mars in some kind of pressurized air-tight dome habitats, but colonization, particularly independent colonization, is practically inconceivable for the foreseeable future. Mars is simply not suited at all to human life, and the problems with Mars are not something that can be fixed with any terraforming that doesn't involve somehow adding 2/3rds of Earth's mass to the planet and somehow recreating a magnetosphere.