[edit] This site was an experiment and as of April 7th, 2009 is no longer accepting changes. It is kept up for archival and reference purposes. New work is ongoing in the direction of having a Pointrel Social Semantic Desktop instead of a Halo Semantic MediaWiki.

From Oscomak

Knowing what materials are available are half of the puzzle when attempting to create a self-sufficient habitat via ISRU; the other half being to figure out what materials are needed.

Items in this category should be annotated with a boolean property "present on (location name) = true" for any place that is likely to be inhabited that has the material.

Though the most common approach is probably to identify what materials are needed and then try to find ways to obtain them, listing the materials on hand can also inspire people to think of uses for these materials that they would not have otherwise.

Minerology

One of basically two groups of resources (the other being the atmosphere) is composed of the surface materials present at a given location. These are tricky to categorize because, though minerals are often analogous, they are usually not identical. For example, basalt is a common volcanic rock both on Earth and Mars but Martian basalt probably contains more silica due to its very different formation conditions. This is further complicated by uneven distribution, and even different chemical compositions, on the planet itself. On top of that, even in the example of basalt, the most common component of Mars' surface, barely any information is known, and the little that is known is improperly disseminated. However, a legion of satellites are currently on their way to Mars or in production and perhaps will shed some light on the topic.

Furthermore, often exact chemical compositions can be found by spectral analysis but are worthless without knowing the structures those chemicals are contained in. Oxygen that is easily extractable from one substance may be locked beyond removal in another.

For an overview of Martian surface compositsion see this article: [1]

Props to red colony for presenting a chemical analysis so explicitly here: [2]

Similiar information can be found here: [3]