MarsPort Engineering Student Design Competition
I went to the grand prize winner's site and downloaded their executive summary. It is quite extensive, possibly representing a few years worth of total work hours. Of course they had a design team, and I have to ask myself sometimes if I am capable of designing such a thing individually. If I were I would have to have one gigantic "check list" of things to accomplish, and a large library of technical reference material. Then just start hammering away at it....
http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/marsport/