and I believe the soil is toxic
and I believe the soil is toxic
—
You are thinking of perchlorates which have an up side, a very positive up side.
Excerpt:
However, a team of scientists determined that these perchlorates could actually prove to be extremely beneficial. There’s a type of bacteria on our own planet, the enzymes of which eat perchlorates.
If you introduce the bacteria or just their enzymes to a sample of Martian regolith, they would eat the perchlorates and produce oxygen as a byproduct.
They even put out a proof of concept design for an emergency life support system where you take a few kilograms of Martian regalith, put the enzymes into a bag, mix it together, and you would have an emergency oxygen supply for several hours out of this supposedly poisonous material.
So, there are a variety of different things about Mars that we thought were true, thought would be serious barriers to colonization, and yet they aren’t.
We were SO WRONG about Mars! Especially about life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0fu-5o91k