Re: What about Oxygen?
@Chemist - I thoroughly reccomend that you read the the literature on the subject, it's extremely interesting. The people who've already looked into it are qualified scientists, not wide-eyed amateurs guestimating numbers (which is what I would be, if I tried). In 'The Case for Mars' Zubrin goes into this in detail, pointing out various options,and how the exothermic reactions can be used to help drive some of the endothermic ones. Indeed he looks at the range of gases and metals and plastics that might be produced in situ and how the various setups to produce them could/would need to interlink for best effect.
I've seen many critiques of Zubrins notions for how best to explore Mars, mainly to do with radiation throughout the trip and perchlorites in the dust once at Mars (and personally, I think he underestimated the amount of living room required to keep people sane for such an extended trip). I've yet to see anyone say that he got his chemistry wrong.
To quote from the NASA refernce design for a Mars mission:
"1.3.3.2 In Situ Resource Production
The highly automated production of propellant from martian resources is another defining attribute of the Reference Mission. The technology for producing methane and liquid oxygen from the martian atmosphere and some nominal hydrogen feedstock from Earth is an effective performance enhancement and appears to be technologically feasible within the next few years.
The split mission strategy allows the propellant production capability to be emplaced, checked out, and operated to produce the required propellant prior to launching the crew from Earth. In addition to spacecraft propulsion, the production capability on Mars can provide fuel for surface transportation, reactants for fuel cells, and backup caches of consumables (water, oxygen, nitrogen, and argon) for the life support system."
http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/design_lib/NASA-SP6107.Mars_DRM.pdf
And that is the most critical assesment of the issue that I've come across - NASA saying that they think it'll possible in a few years, as against Zubrin saying that it's all known technology and could be made right now. If you feel like telling NASA that their chemists don't know what they're talking about, I'd be most interested in the response!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
