Even if you do see the lovely glow of a nuclear spacecraft leaving Earth orbit, it still might not happen.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and if any one of them does go wrong, it is likely to spell doom for the would-be colonizers.
Sending people to Mars is going to require huge amounts of planning and preparation, to an extent that we have not yet, in my opinion, proven ourselves capable of. There is the issue of radiation exposure during the trip. There is the bigger issue of all the stuff that will be required to set up camp. One rocket will surely not be enough, but the bigger question is how to land all that stuff on Mars. And then there's the question of how to land it all on Mars within walking distance of the humans who are supposed to set it all up.
They won't have weeks to get it working. They'll likely need to have a habitat within the first 24 hours. If they waste days gathering all their stuff because it landed all helter-skelter, that will increase the difficulty exponentially.
As you can see, I'm not optimistic about colonizing Mars. On the other hand, we have to try. So, good luck China.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
