Set up a greenhouse and grow plants in it. Of course, the greenhouse will have to be heated, and maybe the light will have to be augmented to give the plants decent growing conditions.
Plants convert CO2 into glucose all the time...
It’s called ‘growing plants’.
Uh plant sugar beets. Plants take in CO2 and produce oxygen. All that is needed is soil, water (which it thought to exist on Mars) and sunlight.
Needs Hydrogen
6(CO2) + 6(H2O) -—> C6H12O6 + 9O2
Done. I don’t take checks.
Good morning.
“For a potential prize of $1 million, the government space agency is inviting the public to submit ideas about how to turn carbon dioxide, which is plentiful on the red planet, into glucose”
May I suggest taking plants with them?
Where my money?
5.56mm
Freepers are so smart!
Photosynthesis.
Didn’t Hollywood already do this with the movie “The Martian?”
Build a Tang production plant, I hear astronauts love that stuff. Where’s my prize money.
The goal is to allow astronauts to visit Mars with fewer materials and ultimately “to enable humans to live and thrive on the planet.”
This is the dumbest waste of time, energy, and money of all time; and will end in death and disappointment.
Better to fix the roads.
A replicator!
One question; what sane person would want to go to that desolate planet?
This is way out of my competence, but isn’t that something plants do? And they don’t have to be trained to do it! and they don’t need government grants.
That sounds like a job for some 17 year old kid, preferably one with gender dysphoria.
Plant crops—simple. Where do I get my $1MM?
Boy did NASA ever get dumbed down after the Obama devil repurposed them into a Muslim outreach program. All this knowledge is lying around in books (old school) and all over the internet and they want someone else to find it for them. For a million dollars! Damn, them Dems love throwing money around.
There are already 20 ideas right here. I propose the million dollars be donated to Free Republic. Problem solved.
How intolerant
As pointed out by numerous Freepers, plants are the answer. Mars has adequate sunlight to grow plants; you just need to install windows and possibly mirrors to bring sunlight into your shielded habitat. There is no need to try and grow plants directly on the surface.
Where this research project will really pay off is in deep space missions or long interplanetary transits. The logistics of supplying oxygen, water, food, etc. for astronauts on long missions are considerable.
While plants have been grown in zero G using hydroponics, it would be very useful to have a bioreactor or chemical conversion process to provide such consumables on long missions. The effect on total launch mass is considerable.
20 years ago when I was an aerospace engineer, I worked with a brilliant biochemist who came up with such a process. His unit was about the size of an office desk and used inputs of CO2, water, electricity from either solar or nuclear, and astronaut waste products.
He started with purely chemical conversion processes and ended up with O2, glucose, starch, and ethanol. He then used the treated astronaut waste and engineered microbes to create fats, proteins, and complex carbs. The output from the processor was bread, artificial meat, and ethanol for the astronaut’s grog ration.
Add in some hydroponic veggies and perhaps a pig or some chickens for a complete diet.
That last part may be the most difficult. Imagine trying to raise pigs in zero G!
with enough energy one can convert pretty much any substance to any other substance, so I’ve invented a battery that’s a 1” cube that weighs only an ounce, costs only $1.00 to manufacture from plentiful materials, maintains its charge indefinitely until used up, and can output a billion terawatts of power at a variable rate before it goes dead, at which point it becomes completely inert and can be used as a small building block ... please mail my prize check to catnipman, c/o Free Republic ...