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Will plants grow on the moon?
- jmyeet 2y agoThis is cool. I look forward to seeing the results of this experiment. In case you were curious, this is routinely done on the ISS [1] so I don't expect low-g on the Moon to be an issue. The one issue is radiation (which is mentioned) because the Moon is exposed to this in a way the ISS isn't (thanks to the Van Allen belt). Should this become necessary however, it won't even be an issue long-term. Why? Because you'd grow things underground. There's absolutely no reason to do anything above ground on the Moon. We have pretty strong evidence of ancient lava tubes so there's no need to excavate either. Ideally, you'd seal a lava tube and put in air and you could live in it with the plants being natural oxygenators. Long-term you'd probably want to see if you could manufacture growth medium on the Moon from available materials. [1]: https://gardenculturemagazine.com/growing-hydroponics-in-space/ https://gardenculturemagazine.com/growing-hydroponics-in-spa...
- qwertox 2y ago> Because you'd grow things underground Is the radiation close to normal light on earth, so that maybe fiber glass tubes could be used to route the light in a controlled manner into underground caves?
- diggan 2y ago> Why? Because you'd grow things underground. There's absolutely no reason to do anything above ground on the Moon If you grow stuff on the surface and in the sun (with some imaginary window that let the good parts of the sun rays go through, without any of the bad stuff through), wouldn't that be at least slightly more energy efficient, compared to growing stuff underground with lots of strong lights?
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> There's absolutely no reason to do anything above ground on the Moon Is there a reason to do anything below ground? We already aren't doing anything above ground.
- bdamm 2y agoRadiation is a serious problem. It tears apart DNA & RNA. Blocking radiation takes lots of material, hence, underground.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThat's not a reason to do something below ground on the moon. It would be a reason not to do something above ground, which, as I noted, we already don't do.
- seanhunter 2y agoI've moved beyond not doing things on the moon. That's so passé. I'm already not doing things above ground (or below ground on Mars) and have no plans for the moons of Venus after that.
- _yb2s 2y agoMany of us aren't even doing things above (or below) ground on Earth.
- bdamm 2y agoYou may prefer to do the other thing but I think as a species it's ok to have some off planet outposts. Feel free to not go there, and also don't go to antarctica or anywhere else particularly challenging.
- ceejayoz 2y agoYes, but it requires said imaginary window. Underground just requires LEDs and solar panels. Both of which we can make quite cheaply.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoLeds, solar panels, and distribution is not cheaper than glass or plastic sheeting.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ralfd 2y agoCould be cheaper on the Moon. The plastic/glass sheeting needs to be vacuum safe and hold pressure in. Plus you need energy anyway for heating (and cooling!), especially for the 2 week long moon nights. Being underground is not only better as radiation shield but also a better/safer controlled environment.
- jmyeet 2y agoThe problem with the Moon is the 28 Earth day day/night cycle. It takes the Moon from blistering heat (~250F) to bone-chilling cold (-200F) so anything on the surface has both a cooling problem and a heating problem. There's no atmosphere so the only way to get rid of heat is to irradiate it away into space or pump it away and do the same thing. Likewise, heating is a big problem and an energy waster as you're irradiating away heat. Going underground just avoids the heating problem, the cooling problem and the radiation problem. It also avoids the issue of meteor impacts on the surface. Those craters came from somewhere. Excavation is expensive but it depends on what you're working with. Is it loose? is it hard rock? I don't think we have good knowledge of the geology of the Moon because we'd have to go there and start drilling cores to find out. The presence of ancient lava probably means we'd be dealing with some hard stones too like basalt or granite. But that's just a guess. Lava tubes, if sufficiently large, just solve so many of these problems. It's just easier to collect power and produce the light you want to grow somethin gunderground.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoI thought there are some regions in the North Pole that are constantly illuminated. Presumably the temperature is significantly more stable in those regions.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI don't think that is possible. You may be thinking of the bottoms of some craters, which are always in shadow.
- dredmorbius 2y agoSome craters have central peaks, and polar peaks might also be possible. Those should be in (near) constant solar exposure. The Astronomy Stack Exchange suggests both north- and south-polar locations, near Peary Crater (north) and Shackleton Crater (south): <https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/26110 https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/26110>
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- cogman10 2y agoFrom the article, I believe the effects of the radiation are what's being tested. Which is an important thing to know if we want to put people on Mars as it also has a huge amount of radiation and food is heavy to transport. If we can grow plants above ground, that can free up resources for an underground colony.
- SoftTalker 2y ago> Ideally, you'd seal a lava tube and put in air and you could live in it with the plants being natural oxygenators. We've tried that on earth and it doesn't really work. You need a lot of plants and a wide variety of plants. Living on the moon is a fantasy. It won't happen in any of our lifetimes. Mars is an even greater fantasy.
- cogman10 2y agoHere's a fun youtube video on just how much it'd take to survive on plant life alone. [1] Spoilers: Can't be done without a huge amount of vegetation. Algae, on the other hand, can work, but it still takes a boat load of algae for just 1 person. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWRkzvcb9FQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWRkzvcb9FQ
- imtringued 2y agoLiving on the moon works, because we can send supplies frequently like we do with the ISS. Meanwhile mars is so far away that anyone who goes there signs up for a suicide mission. Every single mars mission proposed by musk relies on a pyramid scheme where every round of launches sends more and more people until one day self sufficiency is achieved and the first guy sent to mars will have a chance of returning to earth.
- ajuc 2y ago> Ideally, you'd seal a lava tube and put in air and you could live in it with the plants being natural oxygenators. There's a LOT of oxygen on the Moon (basically in every rock). There's effectively no carbon. If you want to grow plants there - you need to take carbon with you (probably in the form of coal you'll burn once there to generate the CO2 needed for plants). 1 person eats about 1000 kg of food per year, which is about 500 kg of carbon. If you grow plants in a yearly cycle you need to sent half a ton of coal for every colonist. The ones born on the Moon too.
- Filligree 2y agoHow hard would it be to find and de-orbit a carbonaceous asteroid or two?
- projektfu 2y agoThose humans are also producing CO2 so it will have some self-sustainability. The 5% CO2 of human breath is a lot more than the ~0.04% in the atmosphere. I have no idea how to calculate the steady state or what the losses would be.
- imtringued 2y agoThis sounds very off. Dried rice is 400 kcal per 100g. That is 500g of uncooked rice per day or 180kg of uncooked rice. What you are counting as "food" is the cooking water being absorbed into it.
- iwontberude 2y agoI thought Musk said some time back that SpaceX was sending people to Mars next year. How did they not already know this?
- vardump 2y agoI think he said an unmanned mission in two years and humans in 4 or 6 years.
- ceejayoz 2y agoAnd you have to at least double any Musk time estimate.
- KMag 2y agoVastly under-estimating the magnitude of the task is how the crazy things get done. Christopher Columbus wasn't unique in believing the world was round, he was rather unique in his vast under-estimation of the distance to Asia. The only reason he survived is dumb luck that the Americas were about where he thought Asia was. All of his doubters were correct that he would die before reaching Asia. Of course, this way, way far down the list of reasons not to take Christopher Columbus as a role model.
- nothrowaways 2y agoTruth doesn't matter to him as long as it brings hype.
- bdcravens 2y ago"Next year" in Musk years means they have at least 6 years to get it right. Snark aside, SpaceX may be thinking of MREs instead of growing food.
- dragonwriter 2y ago5 unmanned mission in the 2026 launch window, manned mission to follow in 2028 if the unmanned are successful is the most recent statement (though some reports garbled that into all 6 happening by 2026.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rocky1138 2y agoHow much energy would be required to provide a localized magnetosphere to protect the garden from cosmic rays?
- Lerc 2y agoHow tolerant are plants to cosmic rays?
- rocky1138 2y agoThis is what the test covered in the article is set to discover.
- pbreit 2y agoSeems like solar could easily supply?
- labster 2y agoEasily, assuming you have solar panels that could survive the temperatures of the lunar night.
- XorNot 2y agoPlants grow in radioactive soil around Chernobyl just fine though.
- bdcravens 2y agoAll we need is a bunch of potatoes, but don't figure to have a healthy stock of ketchup on board.
- squidgedcricket 2y agoPotatoes aren't enough by themselves, you need dairy to hit all the nutritional requirements.
- Ma8ee 2y agoWhy do you think so?
- staplers 2y agohttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/potato-butter-diet/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/potato-butter-diet/ Could keep you alive long enough but eventually you'd want some other nutrients.
- Ma8ee 2y agoMaybe there's a joke here that I'm not aware of, but my question was mostly why they think dairy is necessary. I do believe that potatoes isn't enough, but you don't need dairy products.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BizarroLand 2y agoIn the movie "The Martian" Matt Damon grew potatoes on Mars. Lived off of them and ketchup for a long time, and the ketchup ran out.
- bdcravens 2y agolol I wondered how long it would be before someone got it
- ofirg 2y agoIs the radiation not similar to the one you get in space? seems like that would be a cheaper place to test the effects of radiation.
- Narishma 2y agoThey're also testing the effects of reduced gravity.
- joemi 2y agofrom the article: > Growing plants on the ISS is a complex business, and Porterfield says a chief concern is that plant roots depend on gravity to draw water. So while the radiation might be similar (I'm not sure), other variables are different.
- cogogo 2y agoI’m sure they have considered this and/or doing it already but you’d only need a small centrifuge to simulate gravity for an experiment.
- Filligree 2y agoA small centrifuge won't work; you get a strong coriolis effect. A large centrifuge could, but the ISS doesn't have one of those. It would need to be huge to be absolutely sure your data is accurate.
- cogogo 2y agoLate to reply back but I’m not sure why that matters when all you are looking for is roots to have enough stimulation to uptake water.
- jiggawatts 2y agoPlant roots don’t need gravity to draw water! Plants use evaporation and the tensile strength of water (yes, really!) to draw water up against gravity.
- pbreit 2y agoCould SpaceX make a Starlink that revolves around the moon and could transmit imagery back to Earth?
- bgnn 2y agoWhat you are describing is a satellite.
- seanhunter 2y ago...and there have been a few satellites in lunar orbit, and even a private/commercial orbiter (capstone) recently https://www.advancedspace.com/missions/capstone/ https://www.advancedspace.com/missions/capstone/
- pbreit 2y agoWell, then there’s the beaming back to Earth. Maybe that’s easy…I wasn’t sure. Thx for the snark, tho.
- bgnn 2y agoNo I get it. The words we use to describe things change over time with what we are exposed to. Starlink made satellites sexy again.
- 8bitsrule 2y agoCertainly, apart from light and water and gasses, plants may require certain physical soil properties and nutrients, and possibly other lifeforms to thrive.
- nine_k 2y agoBesides elements that should be present, there are elements that should rather be absent; you don't want to grow potatoes in a soil rich in arsenic or lead. IIRC, most analyzed samples of Moon regolith contain something that plants don't exactly like, but can tolerate. Some selection and / or genetic engineering may be required to produce plants that grow readily on regolith-based soils.
- throwup238 2y ago> possibly other lifeforms to thrive. They certainly require other lifeforms. The vast majority of plants depend on microbes for nitrogen fixation.
- jbotz 2y agoThis is not correct. Most plants get their N from nitrates or ammonia salts, and only some plants (mostly leguminous ones) use a direct symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria to produce these from atmospheric N2. Most of the N in natural ecosystems comes from decay of proteins (from vegetable or animal origin), and in agriculture of course it is added as fertilizer.
- oceanplexian 2y agoToo bad they are going to remain on the surface. Maybe next time they will set up all the hydroponics in a lunar cave. There are shaded areas in craters that supposedly remain a constant 63F (17C) year round.
- whatshisface 2y agoIf the soil has no nutrient capacity, there's no reason to use it. Hydroponics work well enough. I just don't see the case for immersing roots in a medium, where the question is whether the medium would be quite toxic enough to kill them entirely, when roots can grow in air.