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Growing Plants on the Moon May Be Feasible
Smivs writes "European scientists say that
growing plants on the moon
should be possible. Scientists in the Netherlands believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions. It would also aid in understanding the challenges that might be faced by manned bases. 'The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth. A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface. In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.'"
Don't plants need some form of air to survive? Not just rocks and bacteria? Don't see this working out.
We may only get one chance to do this right. If we introduce a bacteria that can survive without artificial shelter (doubtful, but possible), it's there forever. Many of the problems we've had here with invasive species has been due to things introduced intentionally that ended up doing things that weren't anticipated.
Granted, the moon is a harsh enough environment that anything we do will probably only be in a pressurized man-made structure, but that might not be the case if we try it on Mars.
Why wouldn't they try a plant that grows in extremely low nutrient soil? There are plenty of plants that grow in sand along beaches and generate their own food through photosynthesis (all plants do, but some rely on it more than others).
Garden flowers are probably the worst type of plant to try to grow in nutrient-free dirt.
Not only that, Hydroponics also makes the whole experiment pointless.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I don't object to "satellite," I object to "sister."
I can't find a single way of looking at things that would place Earth and Moon in a sibling relationship in any reasonable hierarchy. The Moon orbits the Earth -- no matter how you slice it it's not our "sister."
Pointing out that in some sense the Earth also orbits the Moon (around a center of gravity which is physically inside the Earth) doesn't really help, because you could use the same argument to say that the Sun is orbiting the Earth, and that would make the Sun our sister as well, which of course due to the transitive nature of siblinghood, would logically make the Moon a "sister" of the Sun, which is even more ridiculous a notion.
So uh, yeah.
Better yet, why not have all these brainiac scientists and engineers work on something more fruitful in the short term. Like perhaps alternative fuels, or super high capacity battery systems. All of these would also lend themselves to aiding in space exploration anyway. Think about it. a high capacity battery or Hydrogen fuel generator that can power a home but fit in a suitcase...hummm no never mind...I don't see that as being valuable to space exploration, lets just grow marigolds on the moon instead.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
unless you only want to use your neat suitcase battery for tooling around our upper atmosphere, somebody is gonna have to figure out issues like creating food in harsh environments. There is no reason that both goals cannot be chased in parallel.
Where are you going to get mineral solutions on the moon?
The point of this research is to show that you don't need to import the minerals from earth, you can use bacteria to break down moon rocks.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It makes sense if you think of the earth and moon as being feminine, for example: "mother earth", "moon is a harsh mistress", etc. So, the moon is earth's little sister (a satellite).