Mars on the left, earth on the right. Same exact natural process.

Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis were fast learners

I'm talking out my ass here but wouldn't it make more sense to train a driller to be an astronaut because I'm sure there are tons of little intricacies in drilling that experience is far more valuable. Like if a mission to Mars to drill holes in the surface you'd want someone who is experienced as he'll because if you fuck up and break something it's not like you can next day amazon ship some stuff. 5 astronauts trained to be mediocre drillers probably dosnt equate to one very experienced one. So just as the driller dosnt need to be an extreme expert in astronaut shit, he just needs the basics not kill himself and everyone else and then when it's drill time, he's up.

I really hate when people misremember this quote and shit on it. It's not that "it's quicker to turn drillers into astronauts than astronauts into drillers" the whole pountnof the line and set up was that Bruce Willis' character invented the drill head they were using and he and his team were the only ones capable of maintaining it on the fly. It was literally faster to teach them to be astronauts than it would have been to teach an astronaut the nuances of that drill head and it's interactions with different minerals...

and so far we don't see any oceans on mars

Your entire argument hinges on this, and it's wrong.

NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean and that the red planet has lost 87 percent of that water to space.

https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/water-on-mars-the-story-so-far/

Based on the surface of Mars today, a likely location for this water would be in the Northern Plains, considered a good candidate because of the low-lying ground. An ancient ocean there would have covered 19 percent of the planet’s surface. By comparison, the Atlantic Ocean occupies 17 percent of Earth’s surface.

“With Mars losing that much water, the planet was very likely wet for a longer period of time than was previously thought, suggesting it might have been habitable for longer,” said Michael Mumma, a senior scientist at Goddard and the second author on the paper.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-research-suggests-mars-once-had-more-water-than-earths-arctic-ocean/

with n=1, it’s impossible to generalize how life can get started. I like the speculating/educated guessing and it produces good insights, but we are not anywhere near understanding the origin of life wel enough to know for sure that hydrothermal vents are an essential requirement (or even played a role at all)

Mars oceans evaporated and dissipated into space when it lost its atmosphere after leaving the habitable zone 

As you mentioned, hydrothermal vents are only one idea. There are many others:

Primordial Soup Theory: Proposed in the 1920s by Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane, this theory suggests that life began in a "primordial soup" of organic molecules in water. Energy sources such as lightning or ultraviolet light could have triggered chemical reactions that led to the formation of more complex molecules, eventually leading to the first living cells.

Hydrothermal Vent Theory: Some scientists believe that life may have begun at hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where hot, mineral-rich water spews from the Earth's crust. These vents could provide the right conditions of heat and chemistry to spur the formation of complex organic molecules.

Panspermia: This hypothesis suggests that life did not originate on Earth at all but was brought here from elsewhere in space, possibly through meteorites or comets. This theory doesn't explain how life began in the universe but suggests that life on Earth may have originated through the introduction of life forms from other parts of the universe.

RNA World Hypothesis: This theory posits that before DNA and proteins were involved in the genetic code, there was RNA. RNA, capable of both storing genetic information and catalyzing chemical reactions, could have formed the basis for life and evolved into the more complex DNA-based life forms we see today.

Iron-Sulfur World Theory: Proposed by Günter Wächtershäuser, this theory suggests that life began on the surface of iron and nickel sulfide minerals found near hydrothermal vents. The theory argues that these surfaces could have catalyzed the first organic reactions, leading to life.

Electric Spark Hypothesis: Building upon the primordial soup theory, the famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 demonstrated that electrical sparks used to simulate lightning in a mixture of gases that were thought to be present on early Earth could produce amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins.

Its life, Jim, just not as we know it. Squidgy thing attaches to your face

One of the current idea is that deep sea hydrothermal vents produced the first RNA then cells on earth. If that's the case, and so far we don't see any oceans on mars, it'd be unlikely to find any life there.

Even if we assume the premise, life needs deep sea thermal vents to start, obviously life can expand its habitat beyond.

Life on Earth exists deep underground in caves, or even in parched deserts. Both environments that exist on Mars now.

Life on Mars might have gone extinct, or never even existed, but the conclusion of no currently existing oceans means no life is flawed on its face.

To be clear I am no expert in how atmosphere affects the albedo of a planet but yes, if Mars had a higher albedo it would be cooler. However, in order for liquid methane to exist with Mars’s current atmosphere it would need to be really cold, colder than it could reach with realistic albedo levels. For context, under normal Earth atmospheric pressure methane must be about -161°C and with an atmosphere 100 times thinner on Mars, the necessary temperature would be far lower on the Martian surface.

If Mars had an atmosphere exerting a similar pressure to what we experience on Earth then the albedo would need to be near the max, surpassing even Venus (the planet with the highest known albedo at 0.7) to reflect enough light to remain cold enough. This is of course ignoring the fact that Mars can’t sustain an atmosphere.

If we then go to the extreme and give it an atmosphere like Venus then maybe it would be able to reflect enough light and have a high enough pressure to sustain liquid methane, the problem here however is that Mars is likely too small and its gravitational pull would be too weak to have an atmosphere that thick. Also, as stated in the previous paragraph, this is ignoring the fact that Mars can’t sustain an atmosphere.

So simply put, with the current atmosphere I don’t think any level of realistic albedo (i.e. not 100% reflection) could get Mars cold enough for liquid methane and if we imagine a thicker atmosphere that comes with its own issues.

This however, isn’t to say that a planet orbiting where Mars orbits couldn’t have liquid methane. Simply that a planet like that would be very different to Mars at any point in its history.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to say we should increase the atmosphere. When I said “but if we increase the pressure on the surface of Mars (by increasing the thickness of the atmosphere)” I was trying to say if we imagine a Mars with a thicker atmosphere.

That being said, to answer your question, I don’t think we can. Not now with current technology at least and probably not even a while into the future either. To my knowledge out only hope would be to release a large store of subsurface gas (which I am not even sure if there is such a thing that exists).

Thing is, even if we could create/thicken the atmosphere there is no reason it wouldn’t just be lost in the same way Mars’s past atmosphere was lost which was from the solar winds. Without an active magnetosphere the atmosphere of a planet is blown away so when Mars lost its magnetosphere the once thick atmosphere it had was quickly lost and since Mars still doesn’t and won’t regain a prevalent magnetosphere, any atmosphere it could gain will just be lost. There are some frankly outlandish ideas to protect Mars from solar winds but currently those ideas are so far from realistic they aren’t really worth discussing

Oh there are several options.

Humans could potentially increase the thickness of Mars' atmosphere, through several theoretical methods:

1. Introducing greenhouse gases (e.g. fluorinated compounds) would likely raise the temperature of Mars, leading to the release of CO2 from the polar ice caps and the regolith. And as a result thicken the atmosphere

2. Large mirrors in orbit around Mars or on the surface could be used to focus sunlight on the ice caps, and thereby sublimating CO2 directly into the atmosphere. Which would increase atmospheric pressure

3. Artificial magnetic fields could be established to protect the atmosphere from solar wind.( which currently strip away lighter molecules and prevent the atmosphere from thickening).

Of course all of the above has its own challenges and would require substantial resources. But it’s possible, technically at least

Kind of. The stripping of the atmosphere is related to the core but not because of cooling. The magnetosphere is what protects a planet’s atmosphere from solar winds, without the magnetosphere the solar winds strip away the atmosphere.

This part I am not certain of but I think this is how it works. The magnetosphere is produced as a result of convection in the core of a planet, this is due to the movement of charged elements (mostly iron). The core can only convect if there is a sufficient heat difference between 2 regions (in this case the inner and outer core). If the temperature difference is too small then convection stops which then stops the production of a magnetosphere as a byproduct. This is to say that some point in the past the core of Mars became a more uniform temperature and stopped convecting which removed the magnetosphere which was protecting the atmosphere and thus the atmosphere was removed.

Now, you may ask why this hasn’t happened to Earth. This is because the core of Mars is likely entirely liquid, which is an issue because liquid can convect far easier than solid can, so the liquid core of Mars was able to quickly (on a planetary level) balance the temperature of the core. Earth on the other hand has a solid inner core and liquid outer core, the solid inner core retains temperature as it is harder to convect so the necessary temperature difference can be sustained for much longer.

Surface pressure is about the same as being a km underwater.

From Wikipedia: Experimental ambient pressure dive maximum (Maximum ambient pressure a human has survived)[8] 54 atm Surface of Venus 92 atm [9] 1 km depth in seawater 101 atm

'here on earth too'

Isn't it mind-blowing that we have actual cameras on other planets, so we slowly have to specify what planet we are referring to? Sure, we have this since a while, but I feel like not enough people are amazed by such an achievement

It’s more about the composition of the atmosphere isn’t it?

The gravity assists are some wild calculations. Not only do you have to hit the target planet, you have to hit one or more other planets near perfectly. Sometimes the same planet several times. And it takes years of travel.

Bottom of that page has gifs and links to notable trajectories.

When you have few/no dynamic elements in the system (like air), it actually becomes much “easier” (but still by no means EASY) to send a probe like that.

The most miraculous thing really was getting it to land on the planet without breaking.

I mean, it is a boring image without the context

Reminds me if that quote from men in black:

"A thousand years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew the Earth was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."