Space Farms

Feeding the excess plant biomass to insects would be a cheap way to get some protein. They are more efficient at turning cellulose to proteins and fats than mammals or birds, and can be much more easily bred and contained in small containers.

I wonder if feeding a mixture of algae, yeast, and bacteria diet to insects could work as well. Then we could combine high efficiency of single cellular organisms of converting raw materials and energy into biomass, and then turning that into more fun stuff to eat. I mean compare homogenous sludge to crunchy crickets with hot spicy flavoring.

Check this out:
http://edibug.wordpress.com/list-of-edible-insects/

Algae can yield complete proteins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_seaweed

with the correct strain, and a little know how, you could make it taste like fruit

I read about a couple of Israelis who got lost in a forest in India. They survived for two weeks by eating ants. Yum!

Something that can survive on Mars won't be any more edible by you than anti-freeze. Literally.

Did you hear about the duodentsin? It's a bird that can eat anti freeze. If you haven't heard of it, it's probably because I made it up now.

Anyway, I wasn't proposing humans eat the bacteria - perhaps insects could, or some other type of life form (Vulcan? Klingon? Q? Diplodocus?). That's why you need to go up the food chain. Otherwise, we could survive by licking out fingers. There are certainly enough bacteria there - at least on my fingers, at least.

Phase 1: Engineer a microbe that can thrive and replicate on Mars.
Phase 2: Engineer a microbe that can thrive and replicate on Mars AND eats the first microbe and poops something useful to humans (food, water, booze, whatever).
Phase 3...infinity: Will be worked out later.

Step 4 it evolves into a super virus and conquers earth

Step 1: Engineer a microbe to live on Mars.

Step 2: ????

Step 3: Profit!

South Park has an answer to everything.

I'd go with a flat disk, to maximize the surface area exposed to the sun. It could be spun to simulate gravity, and plants set in concentric tiers. (This would keep the soil, or hydroponic media from just floating off.) A central airlock at either end of the axis would be the best place for docking ports, since it's microgravity, and the docking ship can spin to cancel the motion. You'd have to be able to get the raw materials in, and the products back out, after all.

It would be easier, and less expensive to irrigate Death Valley than to build, and maintain such a habitat in orbit with shuttles from the surface. It might be a good idea once we get a sizable population in orbit with the logistical system in place to maintain, and need such orbital agriculture, but we'd have to build that first. Keep in mind, there's Nothing in orbit except sunlight, and trace ion wizzing by. Everything else would have to be imported...

It would be best if there is a circle with in bigger circles, for instance you start with three types of bacteria, that do not eat each other but only the waste products of the other two, that would allow them to populate the planet and evolve to live on the planet without human care, then you introduce other lifeforms that eat the bacteria, most likely four or more, because they might die out, and then you only add more once you prove the planet's lifeforms are thriving. and soon after you will see new ones that have adapted to the mars living conditions.

I agree with you, but before we colonise any planet we will colonise our own orbits around the earth. and that will help with mining the dead masses around the earth.

Well, actually my position is we fix This one first, then use what we learned to maybe terraform other planets. We've shat on this ones for centuries, and it's still the most habitable place in the known universe for us. So, maybe just maybe if we invested all this technology into remediating our pollution, we might not have to worry about Venus, and Mars for a few hundred thousand years...

Oh, don't be so pessimistic. Pollution now is nothing like it was 200 years ago, when the only real source of energy was coal. We are far more advanced environmentally than ever before.

Right, and we use that advancement for 40MPG cars. There's also billions more people than there were 200 years ago, and because of our culture, every one of them deserves at least one SUV. Yeah, we've come a long way at deluding the public. Tell me when we stop shipping fossil fuels 4 times before it gets to the gas station, burning fossil fuels at every stage, and then I'll applaud our advancement. Hell, I'll blow out the candles for you when the government finally forces Detroit to retool their factories. (And that's just 1 Industry.)

I'm not a pessimist just because I believe it would be easier to terraform the only planet we've walked on than the one that doesn't have enough gravity to support an atmosphere we can breathe. There's a difference between optimism, and wishful thinking. No, I'm not a pessimist, I just have seen the numbers, dispationately, and they don't look good.