Humans are very complex organisms. We need a lot of support from our environment just to survive - more than meets the eye! The essentials are air, water, and food. Mars cannot provide us with ANY of these, so we either have to bring them from Earth or make our own. Providing materials from Earth is both very costly and time-consuming, so if we are to live on Mars, we must take what we can from Mars. Air and water are relatively simple chemicals and can be extracted from the Martian environment. How we obtain food is a very different story. Problem: We are at the top of the food chain on Earth. We consume complex molecules in the form of plants and animals to give us the calories required for our bodies to operate. Earth provides us with all that we need, everything from the microbes that help us digest our food and aid in the growth of plants to the animals that some of us use for food. Mars does not even supply us with the tiniest microbes, let alone large animals. What should we do? Use the menu bar located above to explore some of our options!