growing plants on the Moon?

[nec208]

<p class="first"><strong>Scientists with the European Space Agency (Esa) say the day when flowers bloom on the Moon has come closer.</strong> </p><p>An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. </p><p>Some see growing plants on the Moon as a step towards human habitation. </p><p>But the concept is not an official aim of Esa, and one of the agency's senior officials has dismissed the idea as "science fiction". </p><p>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7351437.stm</p><p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nec208]

<p>You need water for plants and there is no water on the moon.It is also too cold.</p><p>Has for European Space Agency going to moon or mars there no plans .Also European Space Agency has no manned space flight only the US ,China and Russia.So the European Space Agency is talking crazy here&nbsp;.</p><p>&nbsp;And there is no plan for the European Space Agency to get into a manned space flight&nbsp;like the US ,China and Russia.I'm sorry but Europe is not into manned space flight&nbsp;like China ,Japan or India.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[PistolPete]

Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Scientists with the European Space Agency (Esa) say the day when flowers bloom on the Moon has come closer. An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. Some see growing plants on the Moon as a step towards human habitation. But the concept is not an official aim of Esa, and one of the agency's senior officials has dismissed the idea as "science fiction". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7351437.stm <br /> Posted by nec208</DIV><br />I think what they mean is that future Lunar farmers in man-made pressurized farms can use the Lunar regolith to grow plants in instead of having to haul expensive dirt all the way from Earth.&nbsp; This is good because it is one more thing that future colonists can use in-situ to save on costs. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[Boris_Badenov]

<p><font size="2">Contingency planning is an important task of any agency or corporation. </font></p><font size="2"><p><font size="2">The Lunar Hilton.</font></p></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[kelvinzero]

<p>I think this is missleading because I doubt they are actually gaining nutrients from the moon soil.</p><p>It is actually possible to grow plants without any inorganic soil at all. There were some interesting videos on the moon society website about this I think: an experiment at some antarctic base. I will try to dig up the link.</p><p>(edit)</p><p>here it is: look for "luna greenhouse"</p><p>http://www.moonsociety.org/video/</p>

 

[neilsox]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>I think this is misleading because I doubt they are actually gaining nutrients from the moon soil.It is actually possible to grow plants without any inorganic soil at all. There were some interesting videos on the moon society website about this I think: an experiment at some antarctic base. I will try to dig up the link.(edit)here it is: look for "luna greenhouse"http://www.moonsociety.org/video/ <br />Posted by kelvinzero</DIV></p><p>Agriculture on the moon needs a lot of help. two weeks with no photosynthesis, does not compensate for two weeks with continuous sunlight. We need moon orbiting mirrors (or grow lights)&nbsp;to supply sun light during part of the two weeks of darkness. The plants need to be shaded much of the two weeks of sunlight or air conditioned or they will be cooked. The regloth has chemicals toxic to plants. Water&nbsp;may have to be imported from Earth. The humans won't produce enough CO2 =&nbsp;carbon dioxide for more than a demonstration, but human activities may produce enough waste heat to prevent freezing during the dark periods.&nbsp;&nbsp; Neil<br /></p>

 

[kelvinzero]

<p>Grow lights are probably easier. Also polar bases where there is eternal light. You could even place your mirrors such that as the sun&nbsp;slowly travels&nbsp;around the horizon, you get natural 24 hour cycles of lighting.</p><p>It occurs to me that you do not have to recycle immediately. So long as you store all&nbsp;your waste products (which would be easy in the cold of the luna poles) you&nbsp;are not wasting anything. At some point when there is anough tonnage of&nbsp;sewage and stored CO2&nbsp;etc&nbsp;it will be an easier decision to&nbsp;set up a&nbsp;truely closed cycle life support.</p><p>Extracting elements like carbon out of lunar materials is a very long term goal. A closed cycle lifesupport&nbsp;without exploiting any local&nbsp;materials&nbsp;is itself a very valuable first step. If you can live in a box on the moon then you can live anywhere sustainably.. Mars, Ceres, possibly even on Earth </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[neilsox]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Grow lights are probably easier. Also polar bases where there is eternal light. You could even place your mirrors such that as the sun&nbsp;slowly travels&nbsp;around the horizon, you get natural 24 hour cycles of lighting.It occurs to me that you do not have to recycle immediately. So long as you store all&nbsp;your waste products (which would be easy in the cold of the Luna poles) you&nbsp;are not wasting anything. At some point when there is enough tonnage of&nbsp;sewage and stored CO2&nbsp;etc&nbsp;it will be an easier decision to&nbsp;set up a&nbsp;truly closed cycle life support.Extracting elements like carbon out of lunar materials is a very long term goal. A closed cycle life support&nbsp;without exploiting any local&nbsp;materials&nbsp;is itself a very valuable first step. If you can live in a box on the moon then you can live anywhere sustainably.. Mars, Ceres, possibly even on Earth &nbsp;&nbsp; <br />Posted by kelvinzero</DIV></p><p>Is a third attempt in the serious planning stage? Apparently a lot of factors need to be very closely balanced or huge reserves on hand to operate closed box for a decade or more. The previous efforts ended with too little oxygen in the atmosphere as I recall. I'd guess there were several other&nbsp;problems looming in the near future such as toxic compounds such as dioxin. Are all the participants still alive without horrible health problems?&nbsp;Dealing with millions of compounds at parts per billion requires a huge infrastructure which is hardly analyzed at present. Apparently Earth as a closed box has many locations that are quite hostile to life for centuries or longer as the natural cleanup process is very slow for some compounds and especially radio active isotopes. Are their still sections of Heroshima and&nbsp;Nagasaki that humans are forbiden to enter due to radiation?</p><p>Immune systems of the organisms have evolved to deal with many of these toxins, some of which are produced in the organism such as destructive oxidants and bad cholesterol. I suppose human genetic engineering may let us deal with some of the problems internally. ie humans can likely be modified to&nbsp;thrive in a 98% oxygen atmosphere at 2 psi instead of the natural 8 to 15 psi with 22% oxygen. This would be very helpful in reducing the blow out hazard of large space stations in solar orbit and on airless bodies such as our moon. I said 98% as we needs some water vapor in our air and small amounts of many compounds and elements in our air do little or no harm, but are costly to remove.&nbsp;&nbsp; Neil<br /></p>

 

[kelvinzero]

<p>At least one of the reasons for biosphere 2 losing oxygen was because nobody told them that concrete takes many years to cure, and sucks up oxygen during this process.&nbsp;</p><p>Biosphere 2 was just one of the more extravagant attempts. Some others are mentioned here, including hand sized ones you can keep on your desk (obviously not human scale)</p><p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_ecological_system</p><p>There are also many more modest experiments just aiming to tackle individual issues such as growing food without soil etc.</p><p>I dont know exactly how hard it would be to build a closed ecological system and what problems would arise if you tried to maintain it for a decade. I would like to see a lot more effort going into this right now, on earth.&nbsp;Even if the VSE collapses and no significant manned space flight happens for ten years, that is just ten years we can spend getting ISRU and closed system life support to a truely impressive level.</p>

 

[marko_doda]

<p>With the advances in biospheres an sustainable garden on the moon would be feasable if you take into acount the raw resourses needed. Carbon and fertilizer would be provided by bio garbage,co2 from humans or mined from&nbsp; the moon, and water could be taken taken from the polar regions of the moo, other materials like minerals needed could be carried from earth and the reused by the closed loop system.</p><p>&nbsp;The other problems are the low gravity of the moon and&nbsp; the polar night, we still don't know how plants will grow in 1/6 of the earth's gravity and the polar night will pose a great chalenge for getting the power needed. </p><p>Then you can either put the garden in polar regions with the plants in centrifuges, use genetic enginering to make them grow in 1/6 G and to adapt them to lunar day and night or to put the out of the moon in lunar orbit all togheter. </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[amaterasu]

<p>what about the&nbsp;cosmic rays?&nbsp; you'll definitely need a dome or something to&nbsp;filter out the bunch of harmful radiations like UV(B in particular)&nbsp;which damage DNA chemically.<br />i am guessing you'll probably&nbsp;end up recreating the earth on the moon if you want to grow plans there or anywhere in the space for that matter.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[tampaDreamer]

Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>what about the&nbsp;cosmic rays?&nbsp; you'll definitely need a dome or something to&nbsp;filter out the bunch of harmful radiations like UV(B in particular)&nbsp;which damage DNA chemically.i am guessing you'll probably&nbsp;end up recreating the earth on the moon if you want to grow plans there or anywhere in the space for that matter.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />Posted by amaterasu</DIV><br /><br />The first step is to do it on earth.&nbsp; Then worry about the issues that might make the attempt different on the moon.&nbsp; By the time we get it to work on earth, which is not as simple as many seem to think, some of these other problems may have been solved. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[marko_doda]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>what about the&nbsp;cosmic rays?&nbsp; you'll definitely need a dome or something to&nbsp;filter out the bunch of harmful radiations like UV(B in particular)&nbsp;which damage DNA chemically.i am guessing you'll probably&nbsp;end up recreating the earth on the moon if you want to grow plans there or anywhere in the space for that matter.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /> Posted by amaterasu</DIV></p><p>The easiest way to solve this is to cover the garden with lunar regiolith & use lights for the plants, that is easier than to use some kind of transparent shielding material (water, glass or plastic), and you can use lights that are more suited to the plants than the the direct sunlight in the airless moon </p>

 

[webtaz99]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>The first step is to do it on earth.&nbsp; Then worry about the issues that might make the attempt different on the moon.&nbsp; By the time we get it to work on earth, which is not as simple as many seem to think, some of these other problems may have been solved. <br /> Posted by tampaDreamer</DIV>I could not possibly agree more. Most people have no clue how little actual closed ecology research has been carried out, nor what the results were.&nbsp; </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[amaterasu]

<p>i tend to agree with tampa and webtaz.<br /><font color="#000000">just to construct an accurate&nbsp;water balance model (sources and sinks of water) for a single plant, for instance,&nbsp;is bound to be immensely complicated.<br /></font>altho'&nbsp;with commercial light systems being already available and&nbsp;modern bioremediation technologies, coupled with the lunar regolith dome or something&nbsp;as marko and others suggested, the idea might as well be feasible.<br /><br /><em>use genetic enginering to make them grow in 1/6 G and to adapt them to lunar day and night or to put the out of the moon in lunar orbit all togheter</em>.</p><p>interesting but i can't see how you could do that.<br />as for&nbsp;the problems of growing plants in microgravity, i wonder if we can ever have artificial gravity of some sort - you just can't spin the whole moon, can you?</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[kelvinzero]

<p>The wiki article on&nbsp;moon colonization&nbsp;used this as a reference&nbsp;</p><p>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=26823&dopt=Abstract</p><p>"In this connection vegetables (beet Bordeaux, turnip Petrovskaya, carrot Chantanet, dill, radish Virovsky white) and wheat (variety Sonora) were cultivated during the lunar light-dark cycle (i. e. 15 day light: 15 day dark). The experiments demonstrated that traditional plant products can be obtained under the conditions of lunar photoperiod."</p><p>Even if true, I expect we would probably use lights at least to suppliment.&nbsp;</p><p>Im sure we can find a good solution to the gravity problem as far as health is concerned. There are just so many possible avenues to explore. I doubt lunar gravity will be a show stopper for plants in any case.</p>