Mars has plenty of water already. It's frozen at the poles. If humans could create an atmosphere around Mars that could trap some of the sun's heat there, the ice might melt, or at least some of it. Humans might need to move chunks of ice toward the equator if the poles don't melt. We would need to transport a complete ecological system to Mars as well.

All of this seems possible in the future over the course of time with a long term project, but there's a major problem: Martian gravity is too weak to hold an atmosphere rich with nitrogen and oxygen. Mars may have had a thicker atmosphere billions of years ago, but the air leaked into space due to the weak gravity. Planets smaller than Earth don't have enough gravity to hold on to a thick atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. Those chemicals are lightweight, and are easily excited, causing them to accelerate to velocities fast enough to escape the planet's gravitational field.

The weak Martian gravity is the problem with any plan to inhabit Mars. However, it may take millions of years for the air to gradually escape. If that's the case, if we ever have the ability to create an atmosphere around Mars, then we should also be able to replenish the air as it escapes.

They just grew Asperigus or however you spell it, there. In reply to bolded text. For the non bold, we can just take carbon dioxide, our bi-product of using oil, there, in turn, feeding the plants, which produces Oxygen, if we put an animal there(won't happen lol) breath in the oxygen, creating more CO2, which makes the planet hotter, melting the northern ice glaciers of mars, leaving water.

That is harder than it sounds.

Yeah I saw the artcile too, it is possible to grow plant life on there, but since Mar's is to far away from the sun, plant life that needs a lot of heat to grow won't and that won't happen. Of course even with that little shocker on Mars, colonizing the planet doesn't seem that to far fetch just need to be able to heat the planet up to sustainable levels for life to exist.

The problem is, we are nowhere near having the technology to doing that stuff on Mars now. Maybe in 100-200 years or so, but definitely not now.

Wow these ideas are truely interesting and could one day become realistic

Cool dude, I love it! =p

Cool dude, I love it! =p

Has anyone mentioned that plants actually NEED oxygen to survive? just like any other (or almost any other) living organism on Earth they "breathe" by consuming oxygen and releasing CO2... then of course comes the star, photosynthesis, that can turn the "bad guy" CO2 into breathable O2! as far as I remember from biology classes the two processes (breathing and photosynthesis) are independent one from the other so in an atmosphere containing solely or mostly CO2 plants won't be able to breathe, thus to live, thus to carry on the photosynthesis process...

let aside, as mentioned earlier, the lack of nutrients in the soil... nevertheless, I believe someday humans will be able to make whatever change they'll like on Mars, given they'll had survived by then