Why Nothing Can Grow on Mars

Too cold, not enough oxygen, too much radiation, poor soil conditions, not enough water --- pick one, or all the above.

It ain't happening for a very, very long time --- if ever.

What about the clouds of Venus? https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...

There’s a lot of barren desert across the globe where nothing grows—-why not start there?

Do we have technology to manufacture a microbe or bacterium to given specifications? Can they assemble fragments of DNA from different living things to achieve one thing that might live on Mars?

Or how do they plan to "make an organism that could grow outside on Mars"? The mentioning of existing organisms that can do or whistand various things is cool, but how would they use that?

The author of the article is at an organization that is working on engineering organisms that can survive on Mars, so the list of difficulties is their map of hurdles to overcome.

See https://www.pioneer-labs.org/

Can it be done? Probably. But it would take geological timescale to significantly change it this way.

Isnt terraforming a waste? After all, there's no need for open lakes and breathable air over the entire planet, even if it was feasible given the available water, which it isn't. Much better to concentrate resources to make human livable sealed communities with something like hydroponics for food.

No matter how much we conspire to destroy the environment on earth, by burning fuel or nuclear war or otherwise, the earth (or parts of it) will likely be more hospitable to humans than any other alternative. We can shoot some vials of DNA towards Alpha Centauri etc, but so much for the interplanetary humanistic escapists.

I love how the author points out repeatedly that the chance of achieving the goal are abysmal and then goes on about how they try anyway.

It is very informative.

I noticed that the opinion on mars colonization tend to look like the bell curve/IQ meme, with the one thinking we can colonize mars in the middle. The simple fact that we are quickly making earth unlivable although we have 4.5 billions years of coevolution behind us shows that we are very far from being able to terraform any planet

When they were talking about developing microbes that could excrete insulating materials, they said existing biofilms are sugar-based and wouldn't be able to hold in enough/heat water. So I started thinking about what if they could excrete minerals or metals.

Then I was thinking about the challenges of expanding a protected inside area without exposing it to the outside. And about how much material would be needed.

Which led me to thinking of covering individual microbes with metal. And now I have this picture in my head of a little microbe walking around in a armor.

Your friend is probably a retard if he invites you for a coffee and tells you to engineer a plant to terraform Mars.

There will be no terraforming of it for multiple reasons. This was already obvious.

Human habitation of Mars will proceed nonetheless in closed habitats above or underground.

It require bringing vast amounts of starter resources from Earth, and then prospecting for water while scavenging atmospheric nitrogen and carbon. It would be difficult to sustain settlements on Mars if native resources cannot be extracted economically, or if bidirectional trade between Earth and Mars was unable to be established.