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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.'"
sister satellite
I don't think that means what the article writer intended it to mean...
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
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.
Sunlight is the biggest problem. Most places on the Moon go through two weeks of darkness, and providing sunlight-equivalent illumination would be energy prohibitive. Soviet scientists have experimented with keeping plants on low artificial light at low temperatures for two weeks, alternating that with two weeks of light. Apparently, peas can grow like this.
But that would involve *going* to the moon which anyone with a brain knows is impossible.
Of COURSE they used marigolds.
Now they need to study the effect of gamma rays on these plants.
Cheech: "Sounds like the perfect place to grow some reefer, man."
Chong: "Like wow man, the pigs would never think to look on the moon, man."
So you are one of those nutcases that don't believe that we actually landed on moon? Only people with severe psychological disorders believe that crap.
Wait.. why do you have my nick?
Look, if anyone knows anything about growing plants under unfavorable conditions (soil if not legal), it would be the Dutch. Looking forward to new strains like "Even More Northern Lights", "Earthly Glow", ...
had to be said too.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
It'll grow anywhere. It don't need no stinkin' air. The Moon will be completely covered in 3 to 5 years.
You do know that people have been growing plants in mineral solutions for years don't you?
You will only need a source of Co2 which could be delivered from the earth and use a sealed glasshouse (greenhouse) to conserve the ecosystem.
After you have got "enough" oxygen from the plants you can then send some lambs and rabbits to produce more Co2 for the plants.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Actually, you're wrong on every account.
1: The dirt "does" have enough nutrients for some variety of plants.
2: Present under a pressure dome, that the plants would have to have anyway.
3 and 4: Are satisfied by having non-acidic, non alkaline, neutral soil PH, which exists on the moon.
5: Topic of the article.
6: Water "is" speculated to be buried in pockets on the moon.
7 and 8: Both present under a pressure dome.
Growing plants on the moon, just as hard as putting up a pressure dome that people living there would need to be under anyway.
*insert annoying self-signing at the end of a post that already has my name on it at the top anyway*
...that's all I'm saying...
Moon Weed!
I'm too much of a nerd, immediately thinking that "Hey, human flesh doesn't actually have enough nutrients in it that plants need in their current form. They'd have to kill us, then plant themselves in us and get the nutrients from us as we decompose"
I always like to point to this article: Terraforming: Human Destiny or Hubris
It argues Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's vision: that we should learn how to grow plants in Space first, and stay the hell away from all gravity sinks (such as moons, such as planets,) for a very long time.
That said, if we can grow plants on the moon, that's great!
(older article)
I drew up some plans to make what I call a "moontank". At the moment, the design is for cyanobacteria, however adding plants would be an interesting modification. The idea is to use a vacuum chamber here on earth and to make up something that looks like the same environment as found on the moon. Sprinkle in some bacteria, do some directed selection experiments, and see what we can get out of it.
Brings new meaning to 'astroterf'.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
*laugh* Oh, those wacky Dutch. Trying to start a grow-op on the moon.
I for one welcome our new lunar based, wooden shod, pot growing overlords, and anticipate the weed that is truly out of this world.
I think that's a good sign for lunar exploration -- brothels and legalized drugs will make space attractive for much more of the population.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
First they make Moon Pies...now agriculture jobs are going there too.
Would this be enough to grow plants on the moon? The only way to find out would be to do the experiment, but as Biosphee 2 demonstrated, miscalculations are expensive and easy to make. (Biosphere 2 would have needed to be two to three times the size it was to have functioned as intended, due to uninvited insects getting in.) On Earth, the miscalculation was so expensive that nobody has tried repeating the experiment with recalculated dimensions. For the moon, where the cost of transport and construction would be tens of thousands that on Earth due to the high fuel costs and short mission times, you not only get just one shot at it, but you also have to make sure that one shot produces enormous value for money. Unless you know of a tree that produces pure platinum fruit, I don't see that being possible - at least, for now. Future launch systems might become cheap enough to make this possible, but I don't think we're remotely close to the point we could even test the theory, let alone make it worth the testing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What about just harvesting the cheese?
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".
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
I love this kind of argument because it is so easy to debunk. A self sustaining moon colony would be worth the money it takes to set up, from a scientific and economic standpoint. This just makes it cheaper to do.
Consider that there are no pests on the moon. There is nothing but open space and free sunlight. The moon has a tiny gravity well. Think about bio-fuel production on Earth, and all the problems that go along with it. None of those problems exist on the moon.
If you can't see any of the reasons to have a moon colony in the first place, you are too stupid to try to explain this too.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton