re: Case In Point - Funny You Don't See It
We will be going to Mars with as much information about it's regoilth and environment as possible and will design architectures that prevent starvation.
You have vastly over estimated the difficulty of designing flexibility in to the system.
Nobody is going to survive on the Moon for two or three months waiting for supplies unless they have enough already. Look at how long it takes to plan a Progress Cargo mission to ISS or the turnaround of the STS systems. Expect at least weeks if not months between visits. If something happens on the Moon that is equivalent of Columbia's accident expect a full retreat from the Moon for years.