NASA-supported scientist is learning how to use carbon dioxide -- the main gas in Mars' atmosphere-- to harvest rocket fuel and water from the red planet:
"We might have to do what explorers have done for ages: live off the land," says chemical engineer Ken Debelak of Vanderbilt University.The idea, of course, is not new, and a core component of Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan to put humans on Mars.Explorers on Earth could usually count on finding what they needed. The animals might be strange, but they'd be there, and they'd be edible. Mars is barren. But the challenge is the same. Astronauts will want to pull what they need from the planet itself. And although that goal seems improbable, Debelak believes it can be achieved. He's working on a NASA project to make it happen. The key, he says, lies in the Martian atmosphere.
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