Green Plants for Mars Mission

An anonymous reader writes "NASA doesn't keep back that they are going to send a human expedition to Mars in a couple of decades. One of the obstacles for the longstanding 35-million-mile voyage is a food production. NASA researchers have focused on 20 plant species that NASA believes could be grown during a flight to Mars and after landing on the fourth planet from the Sun. By far not all of them are suitable for space expedition."

Comments

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[Emugamer]

wow that is such a fluff piece, it says that the actual information will be released later on, it doesn't mention the species of plants looked at, it doesn't explain much other then they look at byproducts and that they want to help the crew survive... :) where is the geeky stuff?

Re:summary=story

[demachina]

An empty fluff piece is kind of a metaphor for NASA's manned space program these days. They spend lots of money on make work programs, research lots of things, many trivial like this, none of which seem to involve bending metal, putting humans into space or sending them back to the moon or on to mars. Its really turned in to a high tech welfare system and jobs program. They've become so obsessed with making space flight safe they won't fly until its safe. Since they can't make it safe they don't fly but they keep spending money just as they were and waste time and money on the ground like this.

I really wish they'd just shut it down and give all the money to Burt Rutan in no strings attached grants.

The Discover channel has been running a great multi part documentary on Burt's team, "Black Sky: The Race For Space". The thing that really impresses you is the fact they still have lots of emotion about their endeavors and are clearly a no nonsense, seat of the pants, group of engineers and pilots doing thing they believe in, and doing it on a shoestring.

Burt has lots of CAD drawings and sketches for his concept of an entire private space program including orbital vehicles, space stations and vehicles to get out of LEO. He really reminds me a lot of Kelly Johnson the genius behind the Lockheed Skunk Works, the SR-71 etc.

If he had a fraction of the money NASA is wasting year in year out on its manned space program, and not even launching anything, he could build a space program that would capture people's, especially young people's, imagination again like Apollo did.

Re:What is the point of going to mars?

[norkakn]

I vote that we fix SS, healthcare for all, edcation for all AND mars.

We just have to stop bombing so many people to pay for it.