[HN Gopher] A man growing lettuce for space station salads
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A man growing lettuce for space station salads
Author : hiddencache
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-08-15 08:01 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Silent Running:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067756/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
| NickNameNick wrote:
| I have the impression that the space station isn't the most
| hygienic of environments.
|
| I wonder if that poses any problems for growing something like
| lettuce, with it's very high surface area, for food?
|
| Edit: clearly I should have read the whole article before
| commenting...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I wonder why the redness made it more resistant to _E coli_
| growth? It clearly wasn 't the colour... but perhaps the
| pigment.
| c22 wrote:
| If it's a betalain[0] then there seems to be some evidence
| for antimicrobial action.
|
| " _Betalains have been demonstrated to have antiviral,
| antibacterial, antifungal and antiprotozoal activity...._
| "[1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betalain
|
| [1] https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/26/9/2520/htm
| hiddencache wrote:
| I wonder why they started with lettuce. I get the nutrients and
| minerals part, but the calorific value is low. Potatoes also grow
| well using hydroponics and would seem to be a better base choice
| for longer orbits.
| luxurytent wrote:
| Perhaps due to reliable and quick germination? Could allow for
| regular churn for experiments as you adjust conditions
| WJW wrote:
| If you are going to build a pilot plant to test things out, it
| makes sense to make it small, light and not very energy
| intensive then use v2 and v3 to scale up. Since potatoes
| contain a lot of energy, they also take a lot of energy to
| grow. Lettuce is a good crop to start with precisely because it
| is not very energy dense.
| hiddencache wrote:
| Good point, thanks - effectively an MVP approach...
| retrac wrote:
| Unless this is actually used with some recycling on a long term
| basis, it's a net loss by weight. Just ship up some cooking
| oil. So I suspect it's entirely for the practicality and
| scientific value for now.
|
| Lettuce, especially a hardy cultivar, is delicate but fast
| growing and parasite resistant. And not picky about the growth
| media usually. Potatoes are slow and I suspect they might start
| to rot on the space station before they got to full size.
| Hydroponic potatoes is possible but tricky. But I'm only making
| a guess from having grown these plants here on Earth.
|
| In regard to calories I've heard good things said about oats
| and switchgrass. Not many people's favourite staples but they
| grow like weeds under wide climatic conditions with minimal
| water.
| analog31 wrote:
| Nearly the whole plant is edible, no leaves or sticks to
| dispose.
| cwingrav wrote:
| If you've ever eaten freeze dried, canned and dried foods for
| extended periods of time, you'll know the joy of something
| crisp and fresh. Leafy greens are spot on what you'd want.
| Before refrigeration, greenhouses and global shipping, our
| ancestors were the same way. It's why something like Polk salad
| (one of the first greens in Spring) or storing chicory roots
| for their mid-winter chicon (a single crisp leaf that sprouts
| from a single root) were so enjoyed. Fresh and green used to be
| celebrated, before it became too normal to worry about.
| crymer11 wrote:
| I'm curious to know where you learned about polk salad and
| that specific name for it. I've seen the use of "polk" to
| refer to "poke" before (the song Polk Salad Annie immediately
| comes to mind), but I always heard it called "poke" salad,
| which makes sense given the plant name is pokeweed. That
| said, hearing it called "poke" could also just be due to the
| regional accent/dialect of where I'm from.
| WJW wrote:
| I was thinking the other day that it seems launching stuff is
| mostly solved these days but there seems to be a real lack of
| companies developing "infrastructure" for people once they're up.
| The only one I know of is Bigelow aerospace, who are working on
| inflatable space stations that (should) cost a few orders of
| magnitude less than the current batch of stations. There is also
| the zero-G ultrapure glass fiber company and the space mining
| initiative, but they mostly seem to be doing work in space so
| that they can get the final product back to Earth.
|
| Does anyone know of serious companies working on in-orbit
| manufacturing machines or agricultural equipment? Just a proper
| CNC lathe or milling machine seems like it would be a giant first
| step for orbital construction. Perhaps combined with an orbital
| smelter for making metals out of asteroids.
| lmm wrote:
| What would such a company be doing right now? I'm sure that
| we'll eventually want such equipment in orbit, but I don't
| think working on it now helps us get there - right now a lathe
| or milling machine in space doesn't make any sense as launching
| the raw materials would be more expensive than launching the
| finished part. Maybe for a Mars colony where you want the
| ability to make replacement parts in situ, or maybe if we were
| already at the point of having a captured asteroid to work
| with.
| WJW wrote:
| Fair point, though I'll point out that we can also argue
| there's no point in capturing asteroids until there is
| machinery available to work with them.
|
| I was also just thinking about "boring things" like coffee
| machines, laundry machines and space beds for the space
| station hotels that the Bigelow people are designing. Surely
| you'd want to design those well up front so you can iterate
| the design a few times before the first guests arrive?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The selling pickaxes to gold miners formula only works when
| people are pretty sure there is gold.
|
| Funding development of orbital smelters would be an
| incredibly risky proposition given that pay-off would be
| contingent on someone else figuring out asteroid mining or
| something.
|
| And as for "boring things". Same type of deal. It's risky
| throwing money at a problem that only has a payoff if
| someone else succeeds their own high risk activity. Like
| Bigelow currently has no staff, and has totally missed all
| of its planned milestones. Especially for the boring stuff,
| you're also going to be cramped up against someone selling
| solutions that just apes whatever the ISS does. Does only
| have instant coffee, and not having real laundry, and
| having to sleep strapped into a sleeping bag kind of suck?
| Ya. But YOU'RE IN SPACE (and that's roughly just the same
| thing as camping). The novelty alone should be enough to
| tide you through your entire first generation of customers.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Orbit Fab are making what they call "gas stations in space" for
| satellites to refuel instead of re-entering or requiring their
| own launches to refuel. Heard about them a few weeks back and
| thought it was an interesting idea.
| someperson wrote:
| Bigelow Aerospace laid off all its employees in March 2020.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Possibly just temporarily:
|
| https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-entire-
| work...
|
| _" A company spokesperson confirmed March 23 that the
| company laid off all its employees because of the governor's
| order, and that it faced "fines, penalties and threats of
| having our business license revoked" if it remained open. The
| spokesperson added that the company planned to hire workers
| back once the emergency directive was lifted, although other
| sources interpreted the layoffs as a permanent measure."_
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yeah, Made In Space has a 3D printer on the ISS. Axiom Space is
| making space station modules and a new space station. Bigelow
| is actually completely gone now, though, as are most of the
| asteroid mining companies (partly because we abandoned the
| Obama era Asteroid Redirect ARRM mission in favor of the
| Apollo-like Artemis). Also, NanoRacks is a company people
| should know about. They've been involved in space
| infrastructure for a while, using ISS as a platform, and just
| installed a new large airlock on ISS.
|
| There is necessarily some churn in these businesses because
| things like SpaceX's Starship are completely changing a lot of
| old assumptions.
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