I'm not banking on anything and I'm not even really that focused on Mars specifically. Mars is just a good first step in establishing self-sustenance outside of Earth's gravity well, feeding into the goal of greater spacefaring capabilities.

In the case that we don't lose our ability to get into space, cool, development in that field gets a bit of an earlier start. If we knock ourselves back into the Stone Age, well, at least we can say we tried our best in that small window of time. The worst outcome is losing the ability without having even tried.