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Growing Plants In Lunar Gravity

Posted by Soulskill on from the jolly-green-astronaut dept.

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."

1 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Prepare to be disappointed by Simonetta · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.