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Scientists Harvest First Vegetables in Antarctic Greenhouse (apnews.com)
Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets. From a report: Researchers at Germany's Neumayer Station III say they've picked 3.6 kilograms (8 pounds) of salad greens, 18 cucumbers and 70 radishes grown inside a high-tech greenhouse as temperatures outside dropped below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit). The German Aerospace Center DLR, which coordinates the project, said Thursday that by May scientists hope to harvest 4-5 kilograms of fruit and vegetables a week.
Fucking penguins got in and destroyed all my beans....
I saw a documentary that showed an astronaut growing potatoes in his own crap. So it looks like it is has been done before. Why repeat it on earth all over again?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Grow lights have been around for a while.
We used to grow bean sprouts while on long canoe trips. Sprouts are easy to grow, don't take up much space, taste good, and fairly nutritious.
Now that we can finally grow food on the Antarctic plate surrounding our world, we can finally use it as a "jumping off" point to discover what's really underneath our planet.
Flat earthers unite! Down with the round!
Looks like it is a German operation. So may be they still have the technology, or they took some Turkish immigrants with them or may be some Syrian refugee.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I would expect they would try to grow more calorie per kilogram vegetables then Salad Greens. Sure in industrialized areas, Salad Greens are nice for fillers, because we have no food shortages, so we like the crunch and the fact it will fill us up without extra caloric intake. But in Antarctica, I would put more effort into growing foods that will better sustain the people there, because getting food delivered is expensive and hazardous.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When they're regularly growin' maters and taters, I'm in. Heh.
Olphart at play. Ruck FepubliKKKans. Welcome to the Worldwide Idiocracy, y'all.
Since the linked-to AP article is mostly just a picture, with nothing on the tech., here you go:
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-...
http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/deskt...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Pretty cool, but maybe not space & cost effective on a spaceship.
Plants grown indoors... under artificial lighting... here on Earth?!
Color me impressed.
Those pro-Trump denialists claiming you need a greenhouse to grow vegetables in Anatarctica when we all know there's RECORD HEAT down there.
I'll only let them live if they install a weather monitoring station inside the greenhouse and then give the temperature measurements a +5C adjustment in the name of TRUTH.
I didn't even read TFA and even I knew it was for the purpose of growing food outside of earth but you had to make it into a political global warming, Trump bashing agenda.
I hope you're proud of your inability to take the time to read.
They ought to be able to get a huge price premium for rare Antarctic produce.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The incredibly sparse linked story was devoid of any relevant details. Apparently the plants take root in the air and spontaneously grow edible plant matter from a combination of nothing and nothing.
Also, why the effing hell would pesticides even need to be mentioned. In a sterile environment designed to replicate a space station or a habitable fabrication on another planet where the FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK FUCK would the insects come from?!?!? It's like the person who wrote this article was an intern at Monsanto and thinks that pesticides are a required nutrient or something.
Worst article ever. No revealing information on innovation, methods, or novelty. We are somehow stupider for having read it. I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Thank you comrade! Your secret mission to make Democrats look even dumber has been a huge success!
is 900 kcalories
TFA sucks, here is a little more info on their setup (de/en): http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-26129/#/gallery/29773
Sweet, just a few years away from some dank space weed.
Only -20C? They should try their experiment in Canada, where we have real winters, eh?
#DeleteFacebook
I bet the veggies taste better than the ones from all those Arctic greenhouses in Alaska.
After all this is the deep South.
We used to grow bean sprouts while on long canoe trips. Sprouts are easy to grow, don't take up much space, taste good, and fairly nutritious.
I'm with you except for the "taste good" part. They're palatable but never once in my life have I ever craved a sprout or thought that they had a great taste. Nice bit of crunch and can add a little fresh but they have less taste than celery and are extremely bland.
Without pestacides is a cloyingly idiotic stance. If any insects get free on an alien planet, fully exterminsting them as quickly as possible is the name of the game.
There is no environmentalist issue here. They need to bring pestacides (i.e. budget for it in transition) just in case. Maybe not much, and something that can be powderized and is safe in a contained space, but they need it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Where will the water come from on the other planets? I don't believe it would be wise to take it from the Earth.
Until you've eaten an Antarctic cucumber. The level of crunch is off the charts!
But the lettuce is awful, just like soggy frozen cardboard.
Marijuana dgrowers perfected growing things indoors long ago. Maybe they should hire some? Really though I don't see what's so special about this. We already know you can grow plants indoors. They mention the temperature outside as if that makes a difference growing indoors. I would expect a research station in Antarctica to be able to withstand the weather. And you don't need to use pesticides when growing in a sterile environment. Why is this news?
Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides
"High tech" greenhouse? They discovered grow lights and hydroponics.
Now we only need to burn some more coal to speed up climate change, and soon those dried-up, sun-burnt deserts will crave for our Antarctic veggies, sold at premium prices!
The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has a nice greenhouse in which fresh food has been grown for ten years or so. I was there a few months back, and ate some of their greens. Yummy! This experiment must be a bit more exotic, otherwise it wouldn't be newsworthy.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
can hook ya up with a few dozen OG dope growers who did this sort of "covert agriculture" playing around with hydro gear and gel based soils since the early 90's. :)
RIMSHOT! I'll be hear all winter, folks. Try the roast penguin!
fuck off ivan
You can add a few extra vertical rows of half-shadow plants (raddishes, lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, ...) ...).
if you displace some of the heliospectra LED's with low light lights which do have a big spread (CFLs, Neon
This was really interesting work by the Soylent corporation. Apparently it's an element of their new program to commercially harvest oceanic plankton.
> Scientists Harvest First Vegetables in Antarctic Greenhouse
As usual, the japs are moe advanced, they are already growing high-school girls in Antarctica!
No kidding, as Sora Yori Mo Tooi Basho (A place further than the Universe), an anime series about a quartet of high-school girls going to the southernmost continent onboard an icebreaker and spending a 3-month summer shift there, suprisingly became the most popular title of this winter season.
(Similarly, the second most popular anime was Yuru Camp, concerning a bunch of middle-school girls going camping around Mt. Fuji in the autumn-winter season. In contrast, all kinds of over-hyped harem, idol, historic military fantasy and e-gaming anime franchies fell flat on their faces with minuscule viewership.)
Everything in Antarctica is expensive and hazardous!
Also, residents of these bases are going to continue getting food delivered from away, essentially forever. And that food will be tasty and nutritious. However it is lacking something critical.
Freshness. Vegetables. Salads. These are a key part of a diet and good cooking. Also, food is absolutely central to the morale of any crew on a remote posting; few things will cause a riot faster than bad food when people are isolated. Even 'merely adequate' turns out to be inadequate in such conditions.
Yes, you can get fresh veggies delivered. They last a week if you are lucky. There is no practical way of getting fresh groceries delivered continuously, and often your fragile greens are already wilting by the time they are delivered.