I've wondered about the same thing; if it suddenly became cheap to send stuff to Mars, where's all the infrastructure we'd supposedly be sending? Is it being d

I've wondered about the same thing; if it suddenly became cheap to send stuff to Mars, where's all the infrastructure we'd supposedly be sending? Is it being developed right now, or has it been a distant goal for so long that nobody yet has the attitude that it's time to start packing our things? I think, though, that if it's actually happening it might not be happening in a very public way. I mean, it's not exactly in the news every time someone develops a new space suit or a new air lock or a more efficient CO2 removal system. And a lot of the equipment sent to mars will probably just be boring industrial equipment, tools, construction materials, storage tanks, electrical cable, pipes, and so on, some of the same or only slightly modified from what's available at any hardware store. A few things will be highly specialized for the Martian environment, such as vehicles. Some things will be redesigned for no other reason than to reduce the mass so we can send more stuff cheaper. I wonder if there are any large-scale coordinated projects to figure out what exactly is needed for a minimum viable settlement, or if it's all kind of ad-hoc with a bunch of private companies and universities working on projects more-or-less at random with no organization? Or if everyone is kind of just sitting on their thumbs waiting for someone to take charge and/or start giving out grants and making purchases?