Not rude at all! I appreciate the reply. Only reason I deleted my message was because right after posting, I scrolled down and saw someone asking the exact same

Not rude at all! I appreciate the reply. Only reason I deleted my message was because right after posting, I scrolled down and saw someone asking the exact same question at the top level, so I felt like it was best to conserve effort and not repeat them. I liked that other people pointed out that risk could have been eliminated by using polarized connectors (I hope they started doing this after the incident), but also made me wonder about "back-EMF" caused by solar flares. In other words, maybe all thick wires and ground/power planes should be hardened against current surges simply due to a solar event hitting mars (which may incidentally cover the case of back-powering the driver circuits).