All posts by Dora9922

In the book it's explained that Mark uses a combo of human waste to compost and some earth microbes/bacteria that he had brought with him. When the airlock blew and the Hab decompressed it not only killed the potatoes so he didn't really have any available to grow but he also thought it had killed all the microbes. He could reproduce some with his own waste but there wouldn't be the same variety as he no longer had the rest of the crew waste and the Earth soil microbes which were important.

I'm 90% sure in the book that Mark later realises that some of these microbes actually did survive the decompression and started reproducing again but it probably wouldn't have been that helpful given the timeline of starving vs growing potatoes and again I'm fairly certain he couldn't grow the potatoes anymore because they got instantly freeze dried. The potatoes were actually the opposite of rotten as the Martian atmosphere would likely be a great way to preserve the potatoes.

We're still here, just not a lot of new things to talk about :(

I think they were doing tests on plants in lower gravity ect so just having the plants in space for so long would be information. They did stuff on the Hermes too, not just on the Hab but idk.

Two years too late but Ares 1 presupply mission was to Valles Marineris, it's on the wiki page for Ares I, the info was added by Spacewalker1 like 3 years ago but I don't know where they got it from because back in the day I didn't reference and I didn't enforce/encourage referencing on the wikia. I have no clues for Ares 2.