Mars will come to fear my botany powers
NASA seems to believe that making space habitable will require more finesse than Elon Musk's "let's nuke Mars" plan, and has funded a couple of synbio projects which seek to provide "the means to produce food, medical supplies and building materials on site at distant destinations". Dr Mark Blenner of Clemson University is working on recycling space waste (or 'turning poop into food') and explains that "it is impractical for astronauts to travel with all necessary supplies in future long-term space exploration missions…NASA has long been interested in converting space waste into useful molecules, such as fertilizer and propellant. These processes have typically focused on physical-chemical treatments. NASA's recent interest in synthetic biology, in my opinion, is driven by the complex molecules that biochemistry can make, and by the wide variety of products that can be made."