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Talk to this guy about building a prototype Mars base in Poland, maybe.

Plants don't need the full spectrum, so maybe it is possible to use solar panels that are space-rated to produce electricity, put the gardens underground protected from solar flares, and use LED lamps that don't have green to grow the plants. I've seen a picture somewhere. Aren't the Russians (IMBP) doing exactly the same thing (what did they eat on the Mars 500 experiment? IIRC it was a little bit of fresh vegetables as well as the contents of 1 large food storage module. Who knows, maybe the Chinese have got good results with hydroponic paksoi by now. There is an extremely steep "learning curve" but for all of humanity there should be a tremendous pay-off in learning "this is how complicated it is to create an artificial biosphere. So don't fuck up the one fully functional biosphere we have."

There are probably extremely important scientific results that are needed for this but are not accessible enough (e.g. just imagine that some Tchadian agricultural institute studied "how to grow salad and earth worms in sharp sand", I'm just making this example up).

I don't know if it's because Slashdot is an American forum, but has everyone already forgotten the experiments of dr. Valeri Polyakov on himself during his 14 month stay on Mir?
Mind you our TV news showed him looking quite weak when he got out of the Soyuz. I think he needed to be carried (don't remember that well).

And how about last year's Russian-ESA-Chinese Mars 500 psychological isolation experiment, that was fascinating to follow as well, and those men *knew* they were just sitting in a tin can in Moscow, which must surely have made the psychological pressure even harder. Imagine eating Russian canned food for 500 days (and a few fresh vegetables, thank Bog) while you *know* that you could sneak out for a quick pint and meal somewhere in Moscow instead.

I don't mean to be trolling, but it seems sometimes that if something is not done in the USA, it is off the radar of the American public and/or swept under the carpet as "yes, but WE are going to do it MORE and BETTER after we have secured the funding".

Be glad some poor sods from other countries have already done these kinds of experiments for you!!
Let us all pray that Brassica Chinensis grows well on a spaceship.

Hmm... stir-fried Chinese cabbage...

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_medicine#Barotrauma (yes, Wikipedia is not a primary source, I know)
• http://rp3.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/07/13/11/dreams-are-possible-says-1st-southeast-asian-astronaut (only an anecdote though)
• http://iss.jaxa.jp/med/index_e.html JAXA has an article in English on Space Medicine but they don't mention the teeth or the scars
• http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20100014348 this one looks like a primary source; but its only a NASA presentation. on p. 19 under "risk of EVAC" the IMM simulation data table on the left side, lists most likely reason "medical illness" (71%), and in the list of 6 conditions mentioned, nr. 1 is "Dental Abscess". So that explains the exploding teeth :-) Nothing about scars opening in space though.
• Maybe there is Soviet or Russian info on space medicine that talks about that: can a kind soul who reads Russian report if http://www.imbp.ru/ (Windows-1251 charset encoding) has any more information?

Conclusion: forget what I said about the scars opening in space.

Great idea! Maybe the Moscow Institute for Biomedical Problems has some ideas about this.. oh wait..