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Now NASA Wants To Grow Potatoes On Mars For Real (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: In the hit movie, "The Martian", NASA astronaut Mark Watney survives by planting potatoes in one of the modules of the Mars base who is stranded at. The plot device received a great deal of praise from space agriculture experts, according to a recent story in Popular Mechanics. Of course, future space farmers would be advised to grow a variety of crops in order to diversify their diet, not an option for Watney. In any case, according to a story in ZME Science, NASA is partnering with Peru's International Potato Center (CIP) to do what Watney did and grow potatoes on Mars.
Potatoes and Tomatoes might be a really good idea for space/mars...I didn't see the movie, so forgive if its obvious already...
They can be continuously harvested for some time. When we do it on earth, we generally are lazy and don't use them to their potential; we plant wait until fruit appears and harvest.. What's special about growing in confined controllable space is, they can be grown vertically in a box, and continuously produce new edible parts...
Example, Potato:
You start with a box full of dirt say 6-12" deep/walls... Plant potato after the plant gets a good start, add 6" to the box, and put more dirt against the stock.. Keep doing this as time goes by... You can eventually harvest the potatos from the bottom run, as new potatoes grow closer to surface... I'm not sure how long this can go for(potentially a lot time) but you can get multiple crops from a single plant(This is what you'd want to genetically modify if necessary, simply direct it to stay alive/keep producing)..
Tomatos are grown in massive greenhouses today and they can survive years.. They simply keep folding/rolling up the tomato vine slowly through the months in a controlled environment.. New Tomatoes flower at the top of the vine, ripe harvested from bottom.
More importantly still might be those special edibles that grow like a weed and ALL parts are edible/nutritious(Unlike potatos and tomatos) edible roots, stems, leaf, fruit...
http://old.seattletimes.com/AB...
Because nobody wants to eat sweet potato with every meal.
Potato, on the other hand...
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
While I'm sure NASA wants to grow potatoes on Mars, they are simply settling for growing them in carefully simulated soils. There are lots of technical challenges and it's interesting science. However, the title is somewhat misleading as there are no actual plans to grow them on Mars.
Food choices on a Martian colony are going to be extremely limited. Any 'real' food - as opposed to dehydrated reconstituted engineered powders - is going to be welcome.
Sweet potatoes are also more nutritionally beneficial than white potatoes.
You wouldn't grow plants in the open, not just due to (the lack of) atmospheric pressure but because you'd lose valuable water invested in them.
For the foreseeable future, any farms on Mars would be grown indoors in a densely stacked hydroponics or aeroponics environment.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Wake me up when they can grow bacon on Mars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Don't be silly, Nazis have been there for decades
After all the three sisters have been planted together for centuries for how well they work in harmony and the beans adding nitrogen to the soil and the squash keeping the roots cool and moist with their leaves would be useful in a Martian greenhouse. Seems like the most logical choice while providing a nice variety to the Martian farmers.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The soil on Earth has been washed by rain for millions of years and almost all the water soluble salts have been dissolved and transported to the ocean by the rivers. Without the rain cycle the martian soil is likely to contain very heavy doses of heavy and toxic metals, lots of salts. The martian Whatney would have died of heavy metal poisoning if he was eating the potatoes without poetic license and fiction reality adjustment. Just saying.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Just to be clear, the potato is native to the Andes.
Because NASA keeps on suggesting idiotic stuff. Like growing potatoes on Mars.
You do realize that growing potatoes in a human habitat in orbit and growing potatoes in a human habitat on Mars are closely related problems, very closely related? Having astronauts on long endurance missions grow some of their own food is not only cost effective but incredibly good for morale.
So I looked it up.
White potatoes have many (but not quite all) of the major nutrients. But you'd have to eat a LOT of them if that's all you ate.
White and sweet are very close on most things, with a few major exceptions: White is a bit higher in protein. Sweet has about an order of magnitude more sodium (which white is very low in). Sweet also has a bunch more sugar. And sweet is LOADED with vitamin A and Beta-carotene - which is great for a serving but terribly toxic if you get too much - as you would if you tried to live off just sweet potatoes.
So, no, sweet potatoes are NOT more nutritious than white (except if you need some vitamin A and are only eating sweet potatoes as PART of a balanced diet.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is beta-carotene toxic? I knew Vitamin A was quickly toxic, but I thought beta-carotene, which is converted to Vitamin A in the body was close enough to non-toxic.
beta-carotene is very close to non-toxic. The conversion to vitamin A is well regulated, so it normally won't cause hypervitaminosis A. It does react with cigarette smoke to somewhat increase lung cancer risk, has a slight association with raised rates of a couple other cancers, and, when taken with alcohol can lead to liver toxicity. But it's generally extremely safe (which is why you can take it - without vitamin A riding along with it - until you turn orange).
But while sweet potatoes have a lot of beta-carotine, they ALSO have a LOT of already formed vitamin A. Like over 14,000 IU per 100g serving (to a white potato's 2 IU). Daily Tolerable Upper Level of Vitamin A as Retinol for adults is only 10,000 IU. (Even if that 14,000 IU number includes the beta-carotine, that would only account for 10,600 IU, so 300g/day would be the safety limit.) Trying to live on just sweet potatoes is a recipe for a fatal case of hypervitaminosis A.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But you'd have to eat a LOT of them if that's all you ate.
There was an old Cold War joke:
The Russian general tells the American general, "My troops are well fed! They get 2000 calories per day!"
The American general counters, "My troops get 4000 calories per day!"
The Russian general answers, "Nonsense! Nobody can eat that number of potatoes!
This joke was resurrected in the late 90's, when the general folks were talking about how much USB stick storage their soldiers had.
The Russian general answered, "What!? Your soldiers have that much storage on their USB sticks!? Nonsense, then all your soldiers would be blind from masturbating"!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!