[HN Gopher] Will plants grow on the moon?
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Will plants grow on the moon?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-09-27 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| jmyeet wrote:
| This 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-
| spa...
| qwertox wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Radiation is a serious problem. It tears apart DNA & RNA.
| Blocking radiation takes lots of material, hence,
| underground.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That'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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, but it requires said imaginary window.
|
| Underground just requires LEDs and solar panels. Both of
| which we can make quite cheaply.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I thought there are some regions in the North Pole that are
| constantly illuminated. Presumably the temperature is
| significantly more stable in those regions.
| cogman10 wrote:
| From 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Here'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
| ajuc wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| How hard would it be to find and de-orbit a carbonaceous
| asteroid or two?
| iwontberude wrote:
| I thought Musk said some time back that SpaceX was sending people
| to Mars next year. How did they not already know this?
| vardump wrote:
| I think he said an unmanned mission in two years and humans in
| 4 or 6 years.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And you have to at least double any Musk time estimate.
| KMag wrote:
| Vastly 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 wrote:
| Truth doesn't matter to him as long as it brings hype.
| bdcravens wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 5 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.)
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm not saying 5 successful unmanned missions are impossible
| in 2 years, but I think Elon may have slightly underestimated
| the difficulty of the task. There is a lot of stuff left to
| develop still and very little time to do it.
|
| Elon is not great at estimating how long tasks will take. He
| originally promised that full self driving would be complete
| by 2018.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Note that its not so much five in two years as five in a
| narrow window that opens in two years; they'd be near-
| simultaneous missions, on whose success would depend the
| manned mission when the subsequent launch window opened.
|
| But, yeah, Musk timelines are not something I would put a
| lot of faith in.
| sedatk wrote:
| You can choose any year from the calendar, and there would be a
| Musk statement that says we'd be on Mars that year.
| pbreit wrote:
| Maybe he did, but not recently.
|
| He posted this several days ago:
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1837908705683059166
| bena wrote:
| He also baked in an out for himself. Now, if Kamala Harris
| wins the Presidency, he can say that she prevented from
| totally doing the thing he said he was going to do.
| dom96 wrote:
| You might as well ask a fortune teller instead of listening to
| what Musk has said
| rocky1138 wrote:
| How much energy would be required to provide a localized
| magnetosphere to protect the garden from cosmic rays?
| Lerc wrote:
| How tolerant are plants to cosmic rays?
| rocky1138 wrote:
| This is what the test covered in the article is set to
| discover.
| pbreit wrote:
| Seems like solar could easily supply?
| labster wrote:
| Easily, assuming you have solar panels that could survive the
| temperatures of the lunar night.
| Filligree wrote:
| You don't absolutely need to put your base somewhere it'll
| have a night. There's a large mountain chain on Moon's
| south pole that's in constant sunlight.
| XorNot wrote:
| Plants grow in radioactive soil around Chernobyl just fine
| though.
| russdill wrote:
| When people think of radiation protection, they think of the
| magnetosphere. But they really need to be thinking of the
| atmosphere. There's a reason traveling on a plane gets you a
| higher dose of radiation and it's not a weaker magnetosphere.
| jajko wrote:
| There will never, ever be such atmosphere on Moon as its on
| Earth. Too low gravity for example, solar winds would scrub
| it pretty fast even if you would somehow create it 100% with
| a snap of fingers.
|
| Its nice dreaming about options but this aint realistic.
| Filligree wrote:
| Cover your garden with a few dozen meters of rock. In fact,
| build your base in a cave.
| bdcravens wrote:
| All we need is a bunch of potatoes, but don't figure to have a
| healthy stock of ketchup on board.
| squidgedcricket wrote:
| Potatoes aren't enough by themselves, you need dairy to hit all
| the nutritional requirements.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Why do you think so?
| staplers wrote:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/potato-butter-diet/
|
| Could keep you alive _long enough_ but eventually you 'd
| want some other nutrients.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Maybe 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.
| m463 wrote:
| you still haven't properly implemented nachos.
| ofirg wrote:
| Is 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 wrote:
| They're also testing the effects of reduced gravity.
| joemi wrote:
| from 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| A 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.
| pbreit wrote:
| Could SpaceX make a Starlink that revolves around the moon and
| could transmit imagery back to Earth?
| bgnn wrote:
| What you are describing is a satellite.
| seanhunter wrote:
| ...and there have been a few satellites in lunar orbit, and
| even a private/commercial orbiter (capstone) recently
| https://www.advancedspace.com/missions/capstone/
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