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Growing Plants In Lunar Gravity
smooth wombat writes "If everything goes according to plan, an experiment designed to test whether plants can grow in the limited lunar gravity will hitch a ride with a competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize. 'The current prototype for the greenhouse is a 15-inch-high (37.5-centimeter-high) reinforced glass cylinder that's about 7 inches (18 centimeters) wide on the bottom. Seeds for a rapid-cycle type of Brassica plant — basically, mustard seeds — would be planted in Earth soil within the container.' The press release from Paragon Space Development Corporation outlines its partnership with Odyssey Moon to be the first to grow a plant on another world. In addition to the experiment, Paragon will be helping Odyssey with the thermal control system and lander design. To win the prize, Odyssey must land its craft on the lunar surface by the end of 2014."
It took me like three tries before I stopped reading the headline as "Growing Planets in Lunar Gravity"
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
What they're doing seems mundane until you think of the scale of things that have to happen right for this experiment to be successful. I'll be watching this....
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Thus any differences between earth grav and 1/6 earth grav are likely to be negligible. Dumbest experiment ever.
I was interested in seeing if it was like a biosphere, or how much regulation would be required. Unfortunately (according to TFA), they haven't actually designed anything yet.
It will also be interesting to see how the plants handle having a lunar day to complete their life cycle. It would be very cool if the plants were able to perpetuate for a while - even if only for a few days/cycles.
I for one will be quite interested in how this develops...
Couldn't this same experiment be done on a centrifuge in Earth's gravity? Centrifuges usually are used to increase apparent gravity, but if it were shaped so that the plant and soil faced outward, at the right speed, wouldn't one be able to mimic that 1/6 g?
Has anyone else ever wondered if it would be possible to grow something almost instantaniously if the conditions were absolutely perfect ?
I would think that plants would grow faster with little to no gravity.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The hard part is keeping them from frying in direct sunlight.
The splitting of the cells, the growing of said cells, keeping the cells supplied with nutrients, that is what limits the growth of a plant. Not silly gravity. Gravity has an effect (perhaps) on the shape of the plant. I could imagine that with less gravity a tree would be more upright, its branches not bending down by their own weight. There might be a reduction in the cost to pump the sap around although you got to wonder if gravity is not actually used in this process.
But hey, smarter people then me and you have tried thinking about this, didn't come up with a clear answer so they decided to do an experiment. Soon we will know or have another hole in the moon.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How come Intel had to pay for their [banner] ad and Paragon didn't?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Rather than answering the question about if a plant can grow in lunar gravity, I think it would be far more interesting to know if a plant can grow on lunar soil and with lunar sunshine.
;-)
:-(
Not directly of course! But what kind of soil treatment, additives and sunshine/radiation filtering would have to be done to be able to grow plants on a moon based greenhouse.
The question is. How much of what the moon offers can we use to grow plants there, and what adaptations must be done both to lunar based greenhouse and plants to use as much of moon resources as possible?
Sunshine during the day doesnt seem to be a problem in the moon
But those cold long nights
What about a near polar location with eternal sunlight? For example along the rim of the crater Peary
Can we not dumb it down too much please - the plant being grown is clearly Arabidopsis thaliana - it is the single most studied species of plant, being that it is used as a model for all plants - like Drosophila (fruit fly) and mice.
I bet it isn't illegal to grow weed on the moon... or to get high in space...
... and then release the spores!
'I for one welcome our new cress-based lunar overlords'
Plants grow very well in the Moon, just gotta have your whole Line Family pitch in with drilling the planting corridors and whatnot. Oh, and bartering for ice can be pretty difficult.
sic transit gloria mundi
Space Weed!
Time to make some real lunar haze :o
In August 1997, I sealed a 20L glass carboy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboy) with desinfected soil and watertrumpet plants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocoryne). The water is only 40 mm deep just covering to root system. It just thrives!
There are seasonal deaths of individual leaves and various succesions of fungus growths, in white, yellow and brown. The "ecosystem" has not crashed yet on me.
However, I have not yet tested low gravity. That would be an effort beyond my budget...
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It was suppose to have a centrifuge module added (CAM). It was designed SPECIFICALLY for growing life in varying Gs. From that we would know exactly how certain life will respond to the moon, mars, or even something in between so that we can design a ship for long term travel. It appears that NASA may have the shuttle thrust upon them for another year or two. If so, I would like to see us restore the CAM and put it up there. While the original module will not work (been exposed to the elements in japan), we have multiple modules that would work. Heck, we could put up a Sundancer or a BA-330 along with the centrifuge. Then move a number of the units from Columbus to the Bigelow and then put the centrifuge in Columbus. This is probably one of the single largest reasons to have the ISS. This kind of work can not be done on the moon. Of course, I would suspect power would be a problem. Russia no longer has their solar cells, and we are adding more power hogs with out increasing the cells.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One important role gravity plays is in determining which way the roots grow and which way the stem grows. Imagine you're a seed, buried in the ground. How do you know which way is up? In which direction should you start growing? I suspect if you planted seeds in zero gravity, they would grow at very weird angles indeed, and would not be able to pierce the surface of the soil most of the time
I'd like to see a variation on this experiment that doesn't plant in Earth dirt shipped to the Moon, but rather plants in Moon dust taken from the Moon, and compares to that grown in Earth dirt there. Further research might show that mulching with Moon dust could multiple the dirt stocks without shipping so much between gravity wells. If we could ship just seeds (and probably some water), Moon farming could be a lot more cost effective.
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make install -not war
And plan to be one of 'em scientists who actually designs the first life supporting ecosystems to ze moon base. I didn't read the article (when in Rome..) but I wonder if they thought about nutrient recycling. Like how are the microbes and microarthropods and such going to function in soil under microgravity? For examples amoebas that live in soil are infact aquatic species.
Prepare to be disappointed, all ye lunar colonist fans.
Your country is bankrupt. Your government is spending multi-TRILLION dollars to bail-out the rich from their stupidity. You have permanent endless expensive wars in distant and inconsequential lands. You depend on indifferent foreign governments to buy your government bonds that finance the huge debt that previous administrations have incurred.
It's not going to far in the future before the world pulls the plug on America.
When that happens the first thing that will be discarded will be the lunar colonization aspect of the space program.
Get used to it. Don't blame me for saying this. Don't mod me to down to -1 for bringing up an inconvenient truth.
Sure, the space program is cool. And important to the humanity's future. And the key to our (us techno-geeks that is) continued prosperity.
And it will happen.
But not in our lifetimes. It will happen two or three hundred years in the future. Not in 2020.
I KNOW a lot of people here are going to be pissed and feeling backstabbed when President Obama cancels the lunar-exploration projects sometime in the next three to five years. But it is an inevitability. So prepare yourself for it.
Thank you,
A realistic and pragmatic person on Earth, home of all life.
that was one of my first thoughts too...
SPACE BUDS!
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
This is nothing new. NASA has been growing plants in microgravity for years.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/PGBA.html
Search for BioServe PGBA on google . . .
With that diet, I'd be more worried about the effects of methane buildup on the lunar habs..
I think You instantly solved the problem of having a source of bio renewable fuel for the colonists...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Semi-relatedly, since they tried 1 G, 0 G and now they want to try 1/6 G, has anyone ever tried -1 G? i.e. grow plants upside down? I for one would love to see a huge structure meant to hold thousands of cubic meters of soil 100 feet from the ground and let a tree grow downwards. Who knows, maybe you'd get trees of epic dimensions?
You just got troll'd!
MOON WEED! - Imagine the size of the bud's you'll be able to grow in lunar gravity? :D
Cannibas in Zero G = The New High.
What happens in zero-gravity (if that is already known) ? That must be confusing, even for a plant/seed, when there is no "up" or "down".
I read with great concern that some of the plants selected are brassicas and, as we know, these are of the cabbage family. Further, the effect upon the human bowel is quite well know especially if you are sitting next to the brassica eater. Does anyone think that it would be a "good thing" to grow brassicas in space and in confined space living room. Mutated Cabbage vs Mothra?