The United States' artificial biosphere technology was certainly not to be underestimated.
There were no problems with the design of the entire Life-Support Unit. In fact, it could even be called nearly perfect.
From the air circulation and water filtration systems to the automatic irrigation equipment in the growing area, every resource was used with maximum efficiency. It already had one foot on the boundary between science and science fiction.
There was even a circular port roughly three meters in diameter on the side of the Life-Support Unit, presumably intended for expanding the colony.
Just as the ambitions Space-X and NASA had displayed in the Ares Program suggested, they were serious about turning New Virginia into a colony of a hundred people. They intended to use Mars's abundant methane and carbon dioxide resources, along with growing their own crops, to create a self-sustaining, closed artificial ecosystem.
If there was one problem-or rather, one fault that an ecology layman like Lu Zhou could find-it was probably that the Ares Program had been pushed forward too hastily, only to run into a global dust storm that might last who knew how long...
Natural disaster accounted for seventy percent of the blame, with human factors responsible for thirty percent at most. NASA had truly suffered a stroke of terrible luck this time.
Had the dust storm not arrived so suddenly, the colonists of New Virginia might actually have gained a firm foothold on Mars. Once their geothermal wells and methane collection sites were successfully deployed, they could have relied on other means of generating power to hold out until even a global dust storm ended, despite their solar power equipment being unable to operate.
Of course, that was all hindsight now.
After downloading all the data in the Life-Support Unit, Lu Zhou used