Does Mars really have clouds in the sky as depicted in the movie?
Aside from the mess it would be to try to collect the detritus of that delivery and recover anything usable, the reality is that there would be enough aeroheating during descent to destroy unprotected cargo. Geoelastic deceleration is only practical for bulk materials.
There are thin clouds in the equatorial regions, typically at very high altitudes compared to cloud formation on Earth. How such clouds form is one of many questions about the Martian climate that future missions seek to investigate.
Stranger
I prefer the term “lithobraking”.
Or “Here, Mars, catch.”
Interesting but I was asking more about how long the growing cycle could be sustained rather than the nutrition provided.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we send an independently powered robot to grow potatoes on Mars. The robot starts with thirty potatoes and a big sack of fertilizer. It uses the fertilizer to get the first crop going but after that, it’s dependent on chopping up each wave of potato plants and using them as fertilizer for the next wave.
Can the system be sustained indefinitely? My guess would be no; that each crop will lose some elements into the environment and eventually there won’t be enough left to grow new plants. But I’m aware I could be wrong.
I think the big limitation is going to be nitrogen availability. Plants will utilize nitrogen in the fertilizer (which is fixed in the form of ammonium compounds) binding it into amino acids and the nitrogenous bases of nucleic acids, which do not break down easily under ambient conditions. Unless there are nitrogen-fixing bacteria and the environment to sustain them, plants will run out of nitrogen without fertilizer (either in the form of feces and urine, or synthesized). Note that the Martian soil that we’ve sampled does not contain nitrates in any significant quantities.
Stranger
I think “geoelastic deceleration” should be the new “lithobraking” over on the KSP forums
Would it be feasible to preposition smaller bundles of stores in mars orbit, and have a pipeline of supplies en route to mars. The idea being you don’t have to land a full crew and their entire mission food supply , plus the likely contingency needs and the OMFG it’s all gone pear shaped, contingency supplies at once.
Land what they immediately need. Then land smaller packages of top up food in one ton masses with parachutes later on, and keep a reserve in orbit which is not just for this mission , but also contingency for this missions, OMFG it’s all gone pear shaped glitches. If not used it is the top up for mission number two , which will have its’ owne back up supplies en route for use or back up or use on mission 3.
Clearly you would have to put much more mass into orbit and on its way to mars as each one ton top up would be less efficient in terms of total mass to mars obit and useful mass in mars orbit( the structure of the delivery pod etc) , which cost lots of money. However if the long legs on the project are the technical difficulty of landing lots f heavy stuff in one go, which includes a lot of contingency, then maybe leave the contingency in orbit. I suspect the money spent in putting inefficient mass into mars orbit ( and yes, which orbit would you put it in for multiple landing sites?) way exceeds the money that would be spent on overcoming the technical hurdle of landing heavy shit in one go , efficiently, but contingency is always expensive.
Anyway , I liked to movie, fun. I did wonder at his need to band aid together everything required to grow food. He was a botanist, I assume he was sent up there to test growing stuff and would have some sort of equipment to do that. Hardly like they needed a botanist to study the local flora , and they would have needed a paleontologist or paleobotanist to look for fossil records of life, and no one wants to be stuck with those guys for a long period of time, it’s worth it to pay to bring the pebbles back home 
it would have been a less fun movie if he had everything, and didn’t have to solve contrived problems, but that would have been a remake of Gerry, on Mars, nice looking and all, but really, no one needs to see that.
On the other hand, given that he’s producing his water from hydrazine, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out some way to get bioavailable nitrogen out of that, too. I mean, I couldn’t do it, but then, I’m not the best botanist on the planet.
Imagine the nightmare of facing down legions of muscular, hard-to-kill, eight-foot-tall cockroach people on Mars!
Supplies delivered by “Harsh Mistress Express?”