By Dr. Andrew H. Dent

With Elon Musk’s drive to colonize Mars comes many challenges with creating sustainable, life-supporting systems in that hostile environment – most obviously, the lack of water. Beyond the apparent needs for potable water, any additional construction or production at the planet’s surface faces one major problem: almost everything we produce uses water in some form, whether to clean, irrigate, color, or even as a part of the product itself.