> anything we do to make mars habitable can make earth habitable
This is fundamentally false for the device this article highlights. Different chemistries.
> you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars
It’s not. There isn’t oxygen. Superheating 95% CO2 with inert gases and running it over a catalyst in a device that can do about sixty operating cycles makes sense. Superheating a 20% oxygen gas mix [1] is immediately problematic for most metals; doing it to convert the 0.04% CO2 to oxygen makes no sense. (While pumping a bunch of CO into the atmosphere [2].)
If you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars.