If humanity hopes to establish a lasting presence on Mars, it will have to learn to live off the land.
Ambitious exploration efforts have always aimed for self-sufficiency,
but the need is especially acute when the new terrain being traversed is
another planet. Extensive resupply from Earth would be prohibitively
expensive, experts say, so exploiting Red Planet resources is crucial to
making pioneering manned missions affordable in the short term and Mars settlement sustainable over the long haul. Read more...
