[slipframe]

I think genetics is actually the easy part. A few dozen or so people, selected for strong health, probably contain enough genetic material in their groins to start a colony. More would doubtlessly be better, but I think such things have been done by humans on earth before. Frozen eggs/sperm and women willing to be surrogate mothers help a lot too; you wouldn't need artificial womb technology, necessarily.

The hard part I think is "playing factorio IRL" on a planet we weren't evolved to cope with. Bootstrapping industry sufficient even to create additional shelters would be very challenging. Maybe we could practice this on Mars.

[erik_seaberg]

I want to see it, but does a Mars colony have any chance before we’ve tested solutions for the major issues that Biosphere 2 quickly ran into?

[slipframe]

Maybe not, though a Mars colony might not have to run as a totally isolated system. Perhaps solar power could be used to extract oxygen from the rocks or something. It's definitely a tricky nut to crack though and I'm far from confident that it will happen.

[mikewarot]

NASA has already extracted enough oxygen (out of the atmosphere) for about 5 minutes of breathing, on Mars. The nut is already cracked. 8)