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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"
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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...
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.
There's a way you can find out.
:)
Normally if you held your head over a desk and jumped into the air gravity would would make you crack your head on the desk when you came down. Now, if instead of jumping up you just thrust your head straight down to the desk your head would be in zero gravity and gravity wouldn't cause you to crack your head on the desk.
I for one am interested to see how this plays out, be sure to let us know if you try it.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
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?
No. A centrifuge can only add to gravity.
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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.
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I don't thing you understand what he meant. He's suggesting orienting the plant opposite the normal configuration, with the soil and roots system being closer to the central axis, with the leafy portions of the plant growing out, away from the central axis. The problem with this is that you can't really completely eliminate the effects of gravity. If the centrifuge is spinning horizontally, you still have gravity pulling the plants sideways, and if you set it up vertically, you may be able to get and average of 1/6 gravity, but not a constant 1/6g, as you'll actually be increasing the acceleration when the centrifuge is going down.
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
... and then release the spores!
On the other hand, it might be useful to run a centrifuge on earth and emulate say 1g + n*0.1g for n = 0 to 10. We could look at the resulting curve and extrapolate backwards. That of course assumes the extrapolation is meaningful, but it might give a rough indication of what to expect with very little expenditure.
That of course assumes the extrapolation is meaningful, but it might give a rough indication of what to expect with very little expenditure.
That's been done I bet, but you still need to run the experiment to check whether that extrapolation really is meaningful. There isn't really any substitute, because the fundamental problem with all models (and theories and extrapolations) is that they leave out details, and if you push the model far out of where it was designed for you can get other effects dominating.
For example, you can extrapolate gravitation down to the nanometer scale, but that doesn't mean that it lets you fully understand the behavior of matter in that domain. Electrostatic effects tend to rule at that level instead, yet they're not part of any (sane) model of gravitation that I've heard of. Overall, this just tells you to beware of taking models too far.
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But what about if you spin it backwards?
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.
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...
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Back in Apollo days they did this. Actually as I recall they didn't try growing them in pure Lunar soil (that would require too much of a scarce commodity) but in a mix of Lunar soil and sterile Earth soil. The initial objective was to make sure that Lunar soil (and any possible unknown organisms in it) wouldn't have any adverse effect on Earth plants -- but they discovered that the plants actually grew better. Turns out Lunar soil is rich in (inorganic) nutrients just as volcanic soils are.
The Moon is low in nitrogen and carbon, so those would have to be added to Lunar soil for good growth.
-- Alastair