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

Re:Closed System test run

[RAMMS EIN]

Actually, they've tried to do a closed system test run. The project was called Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 being nature).

From what I recall (the Wikipedia article doesn't seem to mention this), The project was either a great failure or a great success, depending on how you look at it. It was a great success, because life thrived in it. The failure was in the fact that the system wasn't balanced very well, and the lifeforms that thrived were the likes of cockcroaches; not the humans that were intended to do scientific experiments there.

Survival of the Fittest

[airship]

Why not just fill a capsule with seeds from every plant on earth and have it crash into Mars about 20 years before we go there? Anything that can grow, will grow, and we'll find out what works without a bunch of expensive and potentially futile research. Like they say in Jurassic Park, "Nature will find a way". :)