I agree that this research is quite a bit more trendy than practical, for example, as someone who works in Catalysis, I'm not super sure that it is useful to li

I agree that this research is quite a bit more trendy than practical, for example, as someone who works in Catalysis, I'm not super sure that it is useful to limit the search for catalysts to materials available on Mars, when materials on earth give you so much greater search space, and catalysts do not get consumed with their use, so transporting them there is an O(1) cost. HOWEVER, I am very optimistic about upcoming technology in green chemistry, For example our retrosynthesis models are finding molecular pathways that are much more green - I have one project for example that is removing dependence on oil using a chemical pathway that we found that uses a molecule thats easily harvested from discarded orange peels. I think a lot of the past in chemistry (1800 -> 1940-50s) was done with little regard to the environment but many places are much more concious of it now. I would be hesitant to be critical of the current state of things, which is a product of the past, as a measure of current innovation, I think there's a logical error there.