Let me know when Mars ceases to be anything but a colossal gravity well for us to throw money into.
man, i can't agree. We have only pure engineering/technological issues to solve. In addition to those (which i don't think were easier for them at their level of tech), they also had the Kraken who could end their journey and lives at any moment and they didn't even know what is waiting for them where they were going and even where that where actually is. They were sailing almost into Black Abyss ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan#Voyage_of_c...
The reason why? Because the differences of scale between going and coming back from Mars vs the Moon is about as much as the Circumnavigation of Earth and doing an average sail voyage between two well known ports in the Mediterranean Sea. There were plenty of sailors that survived those too, but the difference of scale did matter at the end.