The character uses human waste as fertilizer as it contains Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. He needs to do this because martian soil doesn't contain these nutrients because there is no dead life in the soil.

The character makes water by burning Hydrogen and Oxygen together. He creates hydrogen by passing rocket fuel (Hydrazine) through a catalyst to cause it to decompose into ammonia, nitrogen gas, and hydrogen gas according to the following reaction:

Then he burns that hydrogen gas with the oxygen in the lab air to make water.

The character is forced to make an alphabet with fewer than 26 letters, and creates a hexadecimal alphabet based on 16 symbols