How plausible are the predictions made by Stephen Petranek at TED?

Question

Here is the talk in question

He talks about getting to Mars by 2027.

He talks about a device called a WAVAR which will extract water from humidity. He also talks about a device called MOXIE which will convert the CO2 from the air into breathable oxygen. He talks about eating dried foods to eat. He talks about living in caves because of solar radiation. Taking these things in isolation, they seem reasonable enough devices. However, the energy required to run these devices must be huge. He, no surprise, doesn't touch on the energy component.

He then goes on to talk about terraforming Mars. He talks about heating up dry ice (CO2) in order to create an atmosphere with a solar sail. He predicts that doing this will take 20 years before we get a planet with weather and a climate similar to British Columbia. He does concede that it'll take 1000 years before the atmosphere is breathable.

EDIT: To elaborate a bit on what the question is: How much power do these systems need? How many solar panels (or alternative form of power (ie. nuclear) will that require? How many orders of magnitude bigger than previous rockets will one destined to Mars with this payload need to be? Or, how many trips/dropoffs will be necessary? That sort of thing.

It seems as though it would take hundreds of dropoffs of materials before humans would be ready to stay there for an extended period of time. Given that Earth and Mars are only close enough once every two years that means we'd either need to be launching 10s if not 100s of rockets every two years to dropoff materials or some other assumption I've already made is horribly wrong. For starters/guidance, how many/how badly are my assumptions in the preceding paragraph?

Answer 1

Converting CO2 into oxygen is feasible, and is discussed in a number of sources. Water from humidity is possible, but there isn't enough on Mars. It turns out heating rocks, however, will extract some water, and that could be done, although it might be a bit difficult. Both of these are discussed in "The Case for Mars", which I don't have my copy available at the moment. Living in caves is an idea that is discussed fairly heavily, and is a generally agreed good idea for early settlements. The power required would be on the order of kilowatts to manage the water/ oxygen production. Simply put, it's easier to bring the materials needed to produce oxygen and water than it is to bring the water/ oxygen with you from Earth.

The terraforming ideas is where things really break down. It would take far longer than 20 years to do any kind of real system. In 1000 years, well, that's a pretty acceptable answer that is commonly used.