[isoprophlex]

There's like... six millibars of pressure on mars? Admittedly almost all of those six millibars are CO2, but still. Turning all that into O2 might still not support ~photosynthesis~ bootstrapping plant life, let alone humans breathing.

Edit: also sorry to be a party pooper but I studied organocatalysis for a while and you must understand that these research papers about catalysts are almost always so incredibly far away from industrial viability. The ligands take long to prepare, the metals are expensive... and whilst these things might be solvable with enough money, the fact remains that they have turnover numbers that are finite.

(The TON is the amount of substrate the catalyst can transform before becoming deactivated)

Even with a TON of 1.000 (paper quotes < 10) you'd be able to produce 1.000 moles (32 kg) of O2 from one mole (has 100 g Ru, 2000 USD) of this expensive ruthenium gizmo. Oh and it's an electrocatalyst so better get some planet-scale power generation in place, first.

[matkoniecz]

Turning C02 into 02 would not help supporting photosynthesis.

For photosynthesis oxygen is a waste product, it needs C02.

[isoprophlex]

Hehe oops you're right, i meant "plant life"