Can you take a little oxygen form earth put it on a mars colony and increase the atmosphere?

Answer 1

The most expensive and difficult part of space travel is getting into orbit around the Earth. Once you are in Earth orbit, you are over half-way there - no matter where "there" is!

The suggestion of taking some of Earth's oxygen and transporting it to Mars has a number of difficulties. The cost of the oxygen would be negligible compared to the cost of rocket fuel to get it into orbit, and the cost of the rocket fuel to get the oxygen - and the containers to carry so much of it - would doom the project. Fortunately, there is plenty of oxygen on Mars already.

The red dirt of Mars seems to be substantially "rust"; iron oxide. Martian colonists will probably build solar power plants on Mars to generate electricity, and use the electricity to process the iron oxide in Mars' red dirt into iron that can be used for machines and colony buildings, and oxygen to give the colonists the air they will breathe.

There is even more oxygen that's already in space, even though it is a little further away. Astronomers believe that a substantial part of the rings of Saturn may be in the form of water ice. If so, it would be possible to bring the ice from Saturn's rings to Mars more cheaply than trying to lift water from the surface of the Earth to orbit.

Answer 2

Transferring oxygen from Earth to Mars would not be enough to significantly increase the atmosphere on Mars. Mars lacks a magnetic field and has lower gravity, making it difficult to retain a thick atmosphere. To thicken Mars' atmosphere, a more intensive and sustained terraforming process would be needed, such as releasing greenhouse gases from beneath the planet's surface or introducing organisms that can convert resources into gases that can thicken the atmosphere.