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There are a bunch of challenges to growing stuff on the Moon. The low gravity, the lack of defense from ioizing radiation that we have on Earth and, perhaps mos
by jmyeet 2y ago
There are a bunch of challenges to growing stuff on the Moon. The low gravity, the lack of defense from ioizing radiation that we have on Earth and, perhaps most importantly, the day/night cycle.
The Moon is tidally locked with EArth so the da/night cycle is 28 days. Anywhere other than the poles and you'll have ~2 weeks of darkness every month. This affects how you can potentially generate power (ie it complicates solar power generation) but also plant growth. Ideally you want the plants to grow with passive light (ie light from the Sun) because that's "free". So any experiment should try and find out how plants do if they get 14 days of straight sunlight followed by 14 days of straight darkness.
There are some plants you could grow in 14 days of sunlight even if nothing useful can survive the darkness (which, I believe, is unknown). You can spend energy to create light or you can use fiber optic cables to essentially passively pipe light around. I don't know if you can get the right wavelengths you need this way or if it's economically viable.
As for radiation, it's less of an issue for plants but could still be an issue. It's worth finding out. But there are ways you can reduce this. You're going to need something transparent to get sunlight in. You can filter UV rays out to some degree depending on your material. You can even put water between the plants and the sun (ie a water tank between the plants and the Sun).
Or if you can pipe sunlight around fiber optic cables you don't put your plaants on the surface at all. Your pressurize lava tubes instead.
Or if energy becomes so ridiculously cheap that none of these are any problem at all.
- dylan604 2y agoGrow them in the lava tubes using mirrors to bounce the light around like the Egyptians used. Sounds like a fun game to be able to place the mirrors around the surface of the moon so that it still has light during the 2 weeks of darkness
- jmyeet 2y agoI'm curious how feasible it is to put reflectors in orbit around the Moon to create/extend day cycles. I actually found some literature on this [1]. [1]: https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/space-mirrors-dreams-of-turning-the-night-into-day-around-the-clock/ https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/space-mirrors-dreams-of-turn...
- dylan604 2y ago"This is an idea that’s been around for a hundred years already," It's kind of funny to me that "a hundred years ago" has finally gotten to the point that we're still talking technology/industrial age and doesn't seem so old now. When I was a kid, a hundred years ago was still cart & buggy and other low tech things as the most common which made it feel like a really long time ago.
- usefulcat 2y ago> So any experiment should try and find out how plants do if they get 14 days of straight sunlight followed by 14 days of straight darkness. I would think the extreme cold would be an even bigger problem than the lack of light.
- jmyeet 2y agoThat's not necessarily a problem. Or at least it's a solvable problem. A surface greenhouse would be insulated. It would still lose heat to thermal radiation. I'm not sure of the rate. It may be manageable because when the Sun is shining, not only are you heating up but the plants themselves generate heat (ie it's a greenhouse). This may be another reason why you're better off growing plants underground because it lessens the temperature extremes. Otherwise things can be heated with waste heat or directly if required.