Teresita said:

“Mars doesn’t have a basic ecosystem to get a wedge in there and start the whole ball rolling. That takes billions of years of evolution.”

I disagree. Study what happened around Mt. St. Helens after that volcano nuked the surrounding ecosystem. It only took a few years for nature to reboot itself and reestablish a thriving ecology. Also keep in mind that this happened on initially nitrate free volanic ash. Nature is very robust when given the chance.

The prototype for a Mars colony is the Moari colonization of New Zealand. This came in two waves. The first wave were Polynesian hunter-gatherers. They arrived in New Zealand around 1300 AD and almost wrecked New Zealand’s original ecology. The second wave of colonists were farmers and warriors. They exterminated the original colonists and then created a sustainable society. It is estimated that the thousands of Moari descendants alive today originated from between 300-400 colonists. That’s the key to colonizing Mars. Get between 500-1000 people on Mars with a technology that enables growth based upon in-situ resources. Do the math, and calculate how many people would be on Mars assuming an initial colony of 1000 people that doubles every 20 years. It only takes a couple centuries before there are hundreds of millions of people on the planet. That’s how you terraform Mars.

I’m going camping and won’t be able to respond to comments.