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"city boy tries to grow a plant" is a whole genre of hubris that is always entertaining.
by rozap 2y ago
"city boy tries to grow a plant" is a whole genre of hubris that is always entertaining.
- greenie_beans 2y agocan't wait to watch the failures of agriculture on mars. well actually nevermind because people will die.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoAs long as you have a dozen potatoes, some human poop, a sample of earth soil for necessary nutrients and bacteria, and rocket fuel to burn to make water, it should be pretty easy.
- ANewFormation 2y agoSabatier reaction also rocks in this context. CO2 + O2 => methane with water as a byproduct. So all you really need is hydrogen. And conveniently part of the water you produce or harvest can be split into H2 and O2. The absurd convenience of such things realllly makes one think more deeply about the simulation hypothesis.
- acdha 2y agoIf you can’t think of reasons why it would be harder than that, consider that you might want to read up on the problem first before saying it’s easy. For example, you’re assuming compatible soil (no), nutrients (also no), and the absence of toxins (again no). https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01158-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01158-6 Another way of looking at: have humans over-wintered in Antarctica without relying on outside inputs? That’s a much easier problem on multiple scales (oxygen, soil, temperature, water, etc.) so I wouldn’t take any mars proposal seriously before they’ve sent the same equipment to Antarctica and survived longer than the proposed mission.
- ANewFormation 2y agoAntarctica isn't this great example people think it is. International treaties require people leave it in as close to its natural condition as possible. Taking a piss outside is illegal, even peoples crap has to be collected and shipped back home. Any sort of development is essentially impossible. And that article is an interview with the hipster cartoonist who wrote a largely junk science book on Mars..
- acdha 2y agoMultiple countries have bases in Antarctica, so it seems unlikely that a spacecraft-sized addition to the 50 acre McMurdo station is the proverbial straw on the camel’s back for a continent’s environment. Reusing human waste shouldn’t be a problem, either, since the proposals are to use that as fertilizer - it’s awfully expensive not to use everything that you shipped between planets! And, yes, I linked to a best-selling popular science book at the level of the conversation here. I should note that the book has two authors, and the first one isn’t the illustrator but the professional biologist. You’re welcome to provide dissenting views if you want, I’m sure they wouldn’t claim to be the last word on the topic.
- somenameforme 2y agoIt's far below the level of discussion here or anywhere where there is discussion with varying views. The reason is that the book is broken in near to every single argument it makes, often intentionally by relying on misleading arguments or assuming the lack of knowledge of the reader -- knowledge which, crucially, I'm fairly certain they themselves had or should have had with even cursory level research on the topic. In a forum with debate those arguments rapidly emerge. So for instance, their very first effort is to try to 'debunk' the idea of having Mars as a sort of 'backup' to Earth by claiming that even in the case of a doomsday event Earth would still be far more hospitable than Mars. That statement is completely true but also completely irrelevant. Take a typical doomsday event, an asteroid impact or a supervolcano. Both kill you the same way which isn't the initial event, but rather the sun ending up getting blotted out for years by mass debris/ash not only causing an extreme freeze across the planet, but also ending photosynthesis rapidly killing all plant life which starts a mass extinction on up the food chain to animals that ate those plants then animals that ate those animals and so on. This is the sort of event that could easily completely kill off humanity, but it's not because it'd make Earth a worse place than Mars. Even at the climax of mass extinction, Earth would still be dramatically more hospitable than Mars. The reason it will be so deadly is because it's so different than the conditions to which we prepare for -- more people die in the desert of drowning than of thirst. An offworld colony in this case would help ensure humanity is perpetuated, Earth is recolonized, rescue survivors, ensure global order, and so on. In fact this is the case for most of all conceivable disasters. I wanted to dig into more of their arguments but this is already fairly lengthy. If you mention what you found most compelling, I can offer the data (or, as in this case, logic) to the contrary.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI am not sure why you got downvoted but probably they did not watch 'the Martian'.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoAt least someone got the reference, thank you.
- greenie_beans 2y agoi hope this is sarcasm because this is exactly what i'm talking about. i will not be joining you on that endeavor but more power to you. good luck!
- floatrock 2y ago"how do you grow a winery with a small fortune? Start with a large fortune" - silicon valley joke since at least the dot com bubble
- zombiwoof 2y agoMusic industry version goes something like: how to get a million dollars making music? Spend 100 million
- ANewFormation 2y agoExcept it's not especially hard? I, and I'm sure many of us, have decent little home gardens. For fruit trees you have to do literally nothing to get just massive amounts of fruit that tends to constantly scale up as the trees grow. Highly recommended. Lots of other stuff is completely easy mode as well. Leave potatoes out long enough and they start trying to sprout! 'Potato boxes' are another super easy high output plant anybody can do.
- mlinhares 2y agoYou can always count on someone thinking doing some unscalable thing and it being "easy" will scale for an actual operation that needs to make money. Farming is only easy for the people that have never farmed before.
- tdeck 2y agoI once lived in a house that had an apple tree in the back yard. Tons of apples at the start of the season. But then squirrels and deer would come by and rip them off one by one, before they were ripe, taking a single bite and leaving them on the ground. These same animals ate almost my entire vegetable garden, including things deer aren't supposed to like such as potato plants and black mustard. It's a great project to get you outside but there are so many ways to be disappointed.
- 83 2y agoThat's just circling back on "city boy tries to grow a plant". Your garden provided you with both fruit and meat. You were just unwilling/unable to harvest the meat.
- Ekaros 2y agoEasy to grow plant. Hard to make living, if you don't subsidise it with other work or income. Say apples as mentioned elsewhere 1,40€ to 3,60€ kilogram price now in mid winter in supermarket... 14% VAT. Then whole supply chain, stores cut, losses... And all the work that needs to go into each tree, collecting those apples and so on... Food is amazingly cheap. Margins are very thin in general. Much simpler to sit in air-conditioned office or remote work and make more money.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoMargins start improving fast when you turn that fruit into booze. Licensure of course is an issue but many americans are making good money today selling moonshine locally without any of that.