I expect some of the first people to arrive on Mars will be military or police or both. When was the last time you even saw scifi where the civilians got there

I expect some of the first people to arrive on Mars will be military or police or both. When was the last time you even saw scifi where the civilians got there first and had the opportunity to build something new? No, the governments on Earth will absolutely see Mars as a new colony they own, and their laws apply there. It takes too much infrastructure to get there to figure they'll let people do it and face the almost inevitable threat of them declaring 'independence' once they're out of the range of ballistic weaponry. So send the weaponry with them, along with authority-projectors. The idea of a fresh start to human society, of being able to jettison some of the things that only stick around because everyone has forgotten why they were started in the first place, is one of those things that's just too good to be true. Possible, certainly, but too potentially dangerous for those trying to hold onto the status quo back on the homeworld.