Lunar Grow Tunnel - Producing Food on Luna.

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dryson

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If the Moon does indeed have much more water than was thought on the surface then perhaps there might be even more water under the surface which these tunnels could lead to. One use of the tunnels could be to grow food as well as experimenting various ways to terraform a planet from the inside out. How the process would work is a tunnel would be located that was large enough to fit some basic equipment through such as a Robbins ABM designed to fit onto the Chariot chassis. The Chariot ABM,either in tracked or wheeled version would then core the tunnel out to a more rounded shape so that easier building of the tunnel is achieved. Once the tunnel has been cored out modules similar to those of the I.S.S. would be lowered into the tunnel. The modules would be used for worker habit facilities, monitoring facilities and resource storage facilities. The entrace to the tunnel would have to be to be sealed up using vacuum pumps to keep the atmosphere inside of the tunnel from leaking out into space. Once the Chariot ABM had cored out the tunnels and areas designed for the modules to be placed along with the utility lines routed from the surface to the modules and other stations the structuing of the tunnel would begin. The first layer would include the rails for the transport car's to traverse through the tunnel. The TC would be of similiar design to the Node Three I.S.S. Module that provides life sustaining facilities for the crew. Utility lines would run from the TC to the surface where they would connect to the solar power stations that supply them with power or the utility lines would run from the surface to junction block houses from the surface resource collection area and then to the TC via the utility lines. The location of the TC relative to the surface of the Moon would determine whether the lines run directly to the surface or from junction block houses. The next layer would be the irrigation piping . The irrigation piping would run from the surface to each level of the tunnel where the food is grown along with being routed into storage tanks for emergency use. The water that would supply each tunnel complex would come from harvested North and South Pole Ice shelves. The reason that I have chosen the North and South Poles to harvest the ice from is that by reducing the amount of frozen ice at both poles could reduce the chance of a mega storm erupting which can be seen in the movie: The Day After Tomorrow. The Polar Ice would be transported in modules of the same shape of the I.S.S. Kibo science module. After arriving the module would be connected to the sub-surface piping tubing along with the heating element that would first melt the ice within the container after which the water would be sent to a storage facility and then into the complex' tubing network. The total amount of glacial volume that could be taken to the Moon would be 155.16954434611 cubic meters, 171 short tons of glacial ice or 40,990 fluid gallons of useable water. The next portion of the build would include layer the inside of the tunnel with MTR Lining. The MTR Lining would be affixed to hardened foam and then attached to the walls of the tunnel. The lighting for the grow tunnel would come from the 1500w Electronic Magnum XXXL 8 series of grow lights. The reason why I have chosen the to line the tunnel with MTR is so every available amount of heat can be used since the MTR is heat reflective and with reflect the heat back into the chamber instead of being absorbed by the Lunar soil.
Each level would stainless steel grating for the decking that would be bolted to the interior of the tunnel walls. The height of each level would be 7.344 yards or 11 feet the same height as the TC. The height of each level is designed to facilitate the entry or exit from the dorsal or ventral side of the TC during an emergency or for easier loading or unloading of material to each level. The Transfer Car itself would have two hatches built along the side of the module to allow for entry into the TC from either side. The hatches would be positioned on the TC closer to the bottom deck plating of each level. The TC would pass through the center of each level's grating.
The grow beds would be positioned around the walls interior and in beds bolted to the deck plating. Each grow bed box would be an enclosed circulation system that would pump both water and nutrients to the plants roots. Soil use would be limited as the effect of water bubbling up due to low gravity would cause the soil to not remain compacted enough to allow for proper fertilization. The lighting would be placed along the tunnel's wall's as well as being bolted to the level above it so that each light is positioned over a grow bed. Small 400w DEgrow lights would be built into the bottom of each box to simulate the heat of planets core that would allow the roots of the plant to grow larger and allow for bigger and larger crops to be grown. Falls located on each level would circulate the heat around inside of the tunnel so that dead heat or heat that is stagnant is kept from building up in one area that would cause the plants to wilt and die.
At the top of the tunnel would the vacuum sealing device that would would have a Joint Quest Airlock Module built into the ventral side of the sealing compartment to allow for access to the Lunar surface. The Transfer Car would have a docking mechinism fitted to the dorsal side of the module that would provide a pressurized connection with the Sealing Compartment.
The same consistency of gases present in Earth's atmosphere are pumped into the chamber under the same amount of pressure they are under on Earth. The reason being is that the gas pressure will create a barrier of force that the plants will need to grow through which will make their plant fibers strong and able to grow their fruit.
Although the project would be quite expensive to build in the long run the project would save space exploration money on having to send numerous ships to the Moon in order to resupply the colonies with food. The Lunar colonies could also export their exotic fruit, vegetables and nuts back to Earth to create a Lunar economy that would eventually be able to support it's launches and infrastructure building.
 
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dryson

Guest
40,990 fluid gallons of useable water

The amount of glacial ice that would sent to the Moon has been changed. Instead of filling the whole freezer module full of ice the amount of ice would have to be reduced 1000 gallons. The reason being is that enough free container volume
would need to be present in order to allow the heating element of the freezer container to melt the glacial ice inside of the freezer container which would then be pumped into a storage unit. By melting the glacial ice inside of the container would also save the cost of spacewalking to set up the portable heating element that would melt the glacial ice inside of the container.

Also I think that the grow light system may be to much. Is there anyone who has experience with grow light's that can assist in the correct choice of grow lights? The tunnel would no more than 65 meters or 194 feet in diameter.
 
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BurgerB75

Guest
If your stuck on using grow lamps just ask the people that grow "herbs" in their basements...
 
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dryson

Guest
Skip the grow lights, use moon-rated Solatubes! These things work really well...
http://www.solatube.com/

Yes they do work very well in lighting a house but lighting a house and growing plants in a sub-terranean Lunar Tunnel is a little bit different however. Sub-terranean grwoing habits need large amounts of UV lighting as well as heat to stimulate the normal amount of heat and lighting the plants would receive if they were growing in the wild.

One idea did spring to mind about using the SolarTube Lighting and that was using them to replace the electrically powered lighting systems used aboard the I.S.S. The SolarTube would reduce the cost of having to use solar power to power the interior lighting systems of each module which would translate into a few less panels being needed to operate the lights which works down into less fuel being spent to transport the panels to the station to be replaced along with cutting out money used to conduct spacewalks to fix said paneling. The use of the SolarTube may result in only a few hundred of millions of dollars being spent but that is 100 million that could be used elsewhere.

I also think the SolarTube type of lighting system would work perfectly with the habitat and other modules that would be used on the Moon which would once again cut the cost of each module's electrical use. The only problem is that the system would need to be made extremely space worthy and would most likely only be used as a backup if the main lights went out.

And no I do not want to discuss this idea with any "basement growers" as I do not want illegal activity attached to the project even though marijuana is a very good source of oxygen production and would serve well to be used as a source of producing oxygen in the Sub-Terranean grow tunnel. But I do welcome professionals opinions and idea's who use such lighting to grow crops indoors.
 
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EarthlingX

Guest
There is a bit of tinkering going on on ISS, if that is legal enough :

http://www.nasa.gov : Facilities List by Discipline Emphasis Summary

Perhaps something like :

Portable Astroculture Chamber (PASC)
Portable Astroculture Chamber (PASC) is a derivative of the Astroculture series of space flight hardware designed to meet the requirements of flying to the International Space Station (ISS). Understanding the effects of gravity on plant life is essential in preparation for interplanetary exploration. Being able to produce high energy, low mass food sources during space flight will enable maintenance of crew health during long duration missions while having a reduced impact on resources necessary for long distance travel. Applications of a plant growth chamber include using plants as components of regenerative life support systems for travel to the moon or Mars.

or

Astro_Garden (Astro_Garden)

The Astro Garden, used in the Educational Payload Operations - Kit C Plant Growth Chambers (EPO-Kit C), is a small, unpowered chamber used for growing plants in microgravity. Plants are grown from seeds that have been preplanted in a plastic root module; the shoots are contained within a flexible bellows.

It might be worth to also check results :

http://www.nasa.gov : ISS Experiment and Facility Results Publications


I recommend this book :

Hydroponic Food Production, by Howard M. Resh
Amazon link : Hydroponic Food Production: A Definitive Guidebook of Soilless Food-Growing Methods


This will also keep you busy for a while :

Wiki : Hydroponics
Hydroponics (From the Greek words hydro, water and ponos, labor) is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. Terrestrial plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium, such as perlite, gravel, mineral wool, or coconut husk.
 
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dryson

Guest
I understand the basic concept of growing food as I grew up on a farm and maintain my own vegtable/weed garden. Both of these devices work well on the I.S.S. but I doubt that if they would be cost effective in being used to grow vast amounts of food in the grow tunnel. Basically the grow tunnel is the same idea as the first image.

I have also changed the size of the water tank being used to a smaller one. The reason being is because the Kibo sized module would cost far to much money to design the Lunar orbital insertion package around. Inside I have chosen the JEM ELM module as the basis for the design. With the JEM ELM Water Buffaloe you can dock it to the underside of the Pilyhas-1, which is my versoin of an interstellar starship designed around the modules of the I.S.S., as well as docking it to the foreward docking mechanism of an Orion style command module. The Water Storage Unit or WSU would travel to the Moon in the same configuration as that of the Apollo Lander vehicle. Upon Lunar arrival the WSu would be undocked and then descend to the surface of the Moon using it's avionics and propulsion package. Hopefully in the future when NASA has figured out how to extract water from the Moons regolith the WSU would then be used as a storage facility for the water that would then be used in the Grow Tunnel or Lunar facilities.

Here is a question that maybe someone knows the answer to. Is the process of using a solar still able to be used on Luna? If so then another module could be designed that would collect water based upon the solar still process which would then be stored in the WSU.
 
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dryson

Guest
The neccessity of the liquid being frozen has been changed to melting the ice chunks and then loading the polar water into the module instead of sending the module to the Moon in a frozen state.
 
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Yuri_Armstrong

Guest
That's quite a wall of text. Think you could simplify it a bit for those of us who dont know much about agriculture? This sounds like a cool and necessary first step. If we are to think about off-world colonies then we will need to learn how to grow food in space.
 
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EarthlingX

Guest
Yuri_Armstrong":30jqz7ig said:
That's quite a wall of text. Think you could simplify it a bit for those of us who dont know much about agriculture? This sounds like a cool and necessary first step. If we are to think about off-world colonies then we will need to learn how to grow food in space.
It's hard to simplify this subject, but i can try, and be very likely corrected if i astray too much ;)

I think about plants as vessels for water transfer, since that's what most of the land plants that i deal with do. They take salt solutions at the roots, transfer them through the organism, process mineral solution, and let water evaporate, mostly through the leaves.

Plants differ, among other things, in the way how they receive food/elements from the medium, but AFAIK, water is generally used for transfer as a solvent, making food solution a soup of ions and cations.
Some plants are happy with elements in various mixtures from the plain soil, and yet other depend on bio environments in the root system to prepare minerals from medium into the form, from which cells in plant's root system can absorb/use them.

Proper Ph, or acidity/alkalinity of solution, can have a strong influence, and proper levels of minerals are also very important, because over abundance of ions/cations of one kind can prevent absorption of another, with different species reacting differently to these variations.

Hydroponical systems actually do for plants what would otherwise bio sphere in the plant's root system be doing.

Microgravity causes all sorts of trouble with fluids, mixing and so on, influences growth patterns, size, other things which we don't yet know, or at least i don't ..

Plant can be imagined as a part of a water cycle, driven by under-pressure caused by evaporation, with minerals coming inside at the bottom, and pulled with the water by various channels to different processing units.

Proper temperature is also very important, and the best would be at the point, where organism achieves it's highest processing efficiency, and that can differ between species.

Light is the main source for photosynthetic chemical reactions, and plants react differently, depending on wavelength, variation and intensity, which makes this a very long story, species dependent.

CO2 in the atmosphere can have a very strong influence on the plants growth - i think that plants are able to absorb up to three times our current average, with other proper conditions. Interesting part about that is, that they are able to absorb much more CO2 through the root system than through the leaves - that's why all that spring shovelling ..

All of this points in the direction of mono-cultures, grown in their own modules with different growing conditions, depending on the species and purpose. Such modules could share a lot of commonality, just use different settings, with variations in the different hydroponic techniques being used.

I would start with completely soil-less systems, such as aeroponics, where solution is sprayed over the root system. This is rather popular with growers of strawberries among other. A lot of growth media used in other techniques is basically glass, like various growth mats, pebbles and such, and raw materials for various growth media are all over the place.

Main minerals used in the solutions (N,P,K) are usually present in concentrations around 200 - 100 ppm, secondaries 100-10, and then there's a bunch of microelements, but this are all in trace elements quantities and can be applied as one additive to the plant food solution.
 
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dryson

Guest
The tunnel would be pressurized with a comparable amount of gas atoms and molecules that are present on Earth. The Moon is not void of gravity altogether as the Apollo astronaughts were able to walk as well as leap from point to point. I do understand the necessity of having a gravity system that like you said would assist the mixing of the fluids involved in the hydroponic root feeding system.

I wonder however would keeping the root feeding system units under pressure increase or decrease the ability of the seedling to grow to a normal Earth sized plant?

How I see it working is the seedling would be placed in the center of a tube of pressurized water. The pressurized water would create a pressure against the seedling that would mimic the gravitational forces of the Earth that would normally pull at the seed from the center of the planet. Enclosed grow lamps would then heat the water to a certain temperature which would simulate the heat of the center of a planet. Open grow lamps would simulate the Sun's UV radiation that is crucial for a plant to grow.
 
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MeteorWayne

Guest
Actually it's visible light that is used by a plant's chlorophyll to harvest the energy.

UV isnt good, it's bad.

Once again, basic physics and biology....
 
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Yuri_Armstrong

Guest
EarthlingX":20d3qsyn said:
Yuri_Armstrong":20d3qsyn said:
That's quite a wall of text. Think you could simplify it a bit for those of us who dont know much about agriculture? This sounds like a cool and necessary first step. If we are to think about off-world colonies then we will need to learn how to grow food in space.
It's hard to simplify this subject, but i can try, and be very likely corrected if i astray too much ;)

I think about plants as vessels for water transfer, since that's what most of the land plants that i deal with do. They take salt solutions at the roots, transfer them through the organism, process mineral solution, and let water evaporate, mostly through the leaves.

Plants differ, among other things, in the way how they receive food/elements from the medium, but AFAIK, water is generally used for transfer as a solvent, making food solution a soup of ions and cations.
Some plants are happy with elements in various mixtures from the plain soil, and yet other depend on bio environments in the root system to prepare minerals from medium into the form, from which cells in plant's root system can absorb/use them.

Proper Ph, or acidity/alkalinity of solution, can have a strong influence, and proper levels of minerals are also very important, because over abundance of ions/cations of one kind can prevent absorption of another, with different species reacting differently to these variations.

Hydroponical systems actually do for plants what would otherwise bio sphere in the plant's root system be doing.

Microgravity causes all sorts of trouble with fluids, mixing and so on, influences growth patterns, size, other things which we don't yet know, or at least i don't ..

Plant can be imagined as a part of a water cycle, driven by under-pressure caused by evaporation, with minerals coming inside at the bottom, and pulled with the water by various channels to different processing units.

Proper temperature is also very important, and the best would be at the point, where organism achieves it's highest processing efficiency, and that can differ between species.

Light is the main source for photosynthetic chemical reactions, and plants react differently, depending on wavelength, variation and intensity, which makes this a very long story, species dependent.

CO2 in the atmosphere can have a very strong influence on the plants growth - i think that plants are able to absorb up to three times our current average, with other proper conditions. Interesting part about that is, that they are able to absorb much more CO2 through the root system than through the leaves - that's why all that spring shovelling ..

All of this points in the direction of mono-cultures, grown in their own modules with different growing conditions, depending on the species and purpose. Such modules could share a lot of commonality, just use different settings, with variations in the different hydroponic techniques being used.

I would start with completely soil-less systems, such as aeroponics, where solution is sprayed over the root system. This is rather popular with growers of strawberries among other. A lot of growth media used in other techniques is basically glass, like various growth mats, pebbles and such, and raw materials for various growth media are all over the place.

Main minerals used in the solutions (N,P,K) are usually present in concentrations around 200 - 100 ppm, secondaries 100-10, and then there's a bunch of microelements, but this are all in trace elements quantities and can be applied as one additive to the plant food solution.

yeah, that makes more sense now. But the moon still has 1/6 of Earth's gravity, so I think the fluids and such should still be able to function okay. If we're going to have a moon outpost with 4 people stationed on it then a greenhouse like this will be pretty helpful.
 
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dryson

Guest
Meteor Wayne has been moved to the UNEXPLAINED SECTIONagain. The plant take's in all forms of UV and that which it cannot use passes through the plant. There is not such thing as visible light. If we could see visible light then we would be able to see every photon that is emitted from the Sun. What we are seeing is the reaction of an amassed amount of photons collectively called a Sun. We can see the effects of the photon all around us, the color of the sky, the color of the grass etc. But in all actuality we cannot see light.

Why should we only settle for maintaining a four person outpost on the Moon? We should build large facilities acrosss the Moon and then sell the plants, nuts, fruits etc. back to Earth as well as other colonies to establish a Lunar system of economics which would eventually support Lunar operations altogether.

I have also found an intersting vehicle that would be best suited to unload the water buffaloe Athletefrom it's storage container.
 
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MeteorWayne

Guest
dryson":30cn1v1a said:
Meteor Wayne has been moved to the UNEXPLAINED SECTIONagain.

WTH are you talking about?
The plant take's in all forms of UV and that which it cannot use passes through the plant.

There is not such thing as visible light.

Huh? That's one of the top ten dumbest things ever said at SDC!!

If we could see visible light then we would be able to see every photon that is emitted from the Sun.

Huh? IF we could see visible light? What the hell do you think we use our eyes for?

What we are seeing is the reaction of an amassed amount of photons collectively called a Sun. We can see the effects of the photon all around us, the color of the sky, the color of the grass etc. But in all actuality we cannot see light.

Huh? Are you nuts?

This foolish non science will be moved to The Unexplained, since we don't have a dustbin....
 
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Gravity_Ray

Guest
I like the concept of tunnels for a moon base. It can be built around the poles for surface solar energy gathering, but most likely you will need nuclear energy for all the stuff you’re talking about so it’s not critical to build around the pole, you should do the tunnels where ever you find water.

The main problem with your premise is soil. Lunar regolith is useless as soil. Soil is actually a living thing. So more than likely the first plants will have to be grown hydroponically and later as you get more bio mass some soil can be made. Soil is going to be one of the most expensive things outside of Earth.

The other problem you will have is gravity. The gravity on the Moon is very low. Much experimentation needs to be done either on the ISS or on the Moon itself to determine what the low gravity will do to plants. Plants on this planet have evolved just as we humans to need gravity. Without some level of gravity plants will probably grow very weak and will probably keep breaking under their own weight.

But the concept of lunar tunnel base is a very good one as it would solve some of the surface radiation problems you will encounter as well as tempreture control.

By the way, plants need visible light UV light doesn’t really do anything for plants. Plants are photosynthetically (sp?) active only in a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that basically corresponds to the visible light spectrum. UV is of course invisible to humans and also of minimal use to plants as well, at least as far as photosynthesis goes.
 
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Yuri_Armstrong

Guest
MeteorWayne":18lbyty9 said:
dryson":18lbyty9 said:
Meteor Wayne has been moved to the UNEXPLAINED SECTIONagain.

WTH are you talking about?
The plant take's in all forms of UV and that which it cannot use passes through the plant.

There is not such thing as visible light.

Huh? That's one of the top ten dumbest things ever said at SDC!!

If we could see visible light then we would be able to see every photon that is emitted from the Sun.

Huh? IF we could see visible light? What the hell do you think we use our eyes for?

What we are seeing is the reaction of an amassed amount of photons collectively called a Sun. We can see the effects of the photon all around us, the color of the sky, the color of the grass etc. But in all actuality we cannot see light.

Huh? Are you nuts?

This foolish non science will be moved to The Unexplained, since we don't have a dustbin....

I think that was a little harsh. I think what he was trying to say is that we aren't seeing the actual photons themselves, we are seeing the effects of the photons being reflected throughout our visible spectrum in the atmosphere.

He's making a point about the possibility of growing food on the moon, which is a must if we're going to have people there.

Why should we only settle for maintaining a four person outpost on the Moon? We should build large facilities acrosss the Moon and then sell the plants, nuts, fruits etc. back to Earth as well as other colonies to establish a Lunar system of economics which would eventually support Lunar operations altogether

I'm not saying that's all we should have, I'm saying that's what we should start with. We can't establish a full fledged city like you're describing on the moon yet because there's still a lot of unknowns involved when you talk about humans on the moon. We will need a scientific outpost similar to the ISS to study the long term effects of surviving on the moon. Once we understand more, we will be able to start developing the moon further. But we have to be patient. Space colonization is something that will take quite a long time to develop. A small outpost is the best way to get started.
 
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HopDavid

Guest
MeteorWayne":g7kk25j5 said:
Actually it's visible light that is used by a plant's chlorophyll to harvest the energy.

UV isnt good, it's bad.

Once again, basic physics and biology....

I was a little skeptical at first. I know my lizard needs UV light in conjunction with calcium supplements to stay healthy.

But a little Googling gave me:

200 - 280 nm UVC ultraviolet range which is extremely harmful to plants because it is highly toxic.
280 - 315 nm Includes harmful UVB ultraviolet light which causes plants colors to fade.
315 - 380 nm Range of UVA ultraviolet light which is neither harmful nor beneficial to plant growth.
380 - 400 nm Start of visible light spectrum. Process of chlorophyll absorption begins. UV protected plastics ideally block out any light below this range.
400 - 520 nm This range includes violet, blue, and green bands. Peak absorption by chlorophyll occurs, and a strong influence on photosynthesis. (promotes vegetative growth)
520 - 610 nm This range includes the green, yellow, and orange bands and has less absorption by pigments.
610 - 720 nm This is the red band. Large amount of absorption by chlorophyll occurs, and most significant influence on photosynthesis. (promotes flowering and budding)
720 - 1000 nm There is little absorption by chlorophyll here. Flowering and germination is influenced. At the high end of the band is infrared, which is heat.
1000+ nm Totally infrared range. All energy absorbed at this point is converted to heat.

This is from ACF Indoor Plant Grow Lights and Information Guide

Looks like you're correct, Meteor Wayne. UV is bad for plants.
 
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EarthlingX

Guest
There is no need for soil to grow things, or at least not for bulk food production. I actually can't remember any plant from the top of the head that would require soil, perhaps fungi, but that's another story. What is needed is a lot of water, pipes, rather small amount of nutrients, and depending on the technique used, more or less glass based growth media, like growing mats and similar. I wouldn't use those either, because they have to be changed after each crop, which just generates waste and more complications.
What's more, using soil would complicate things immensely, without any need at all.

LED lightning is most energy efficient and would very likely be the best for the purpose, assuming growing under superficial lightning.


More ISS experiments :

http://www.energia.ru : RASTENIA EXPERIMENT
The experiment consists of four phases. Specific investigations are conducted in each phase in the field of gravitational biology of plants and cultivation procedures of plants are tested in microgravity.

medic-24.jpg

rt.com : Maksim Suraev's blog
pshenitsa1.jpg

With some regret I've cut my wheat... After all, it has been with me at the station for nearly five months.


http://www.energia.ru : SEEDLINGS EXPERIMENT
Experiment SEEDLINGS forms part of the scientific research program performed by Italian Astronaut Roberto Vittori (ESA) on the Russian Segment of the ISS in the frame of ENEIDE ISM Project. The European Space Agency is a customer of the preparation and implementation of the research program
 
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SteveCNC

Guest
you might have to do something special for plants that bear their edibles in the roots like potatoes , radish , peanut , and I'm sure there's more but potatoes would be the most desired I would think but I don't know how it would work out hydroponically . As a kid I started lots of potato plants from a potato , 4 toothpicks and a glass of water but I always had to plant it once it started growing a stem or it would die .
 
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EarthlingX

Guest
Easiest solution is not to start with the plants that are not so happy with hydroponics, and make the best with the plants that are ;)
Aztecs had floating gardens, not really anything new, perhaps for Spaniards of that time ;)

Corn could very likely do well on hydroponics, and wheat, obviously, is working too. I've seen rotating modules for growing grass to use as a biomass or for CO2 processing. Such module could also be used as a water filtering system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics#Soilless_culture
Billions of container plants are produced annually, including fruit, shade and ornamental trees, shrubs, forest seedlings, vegetable seedlings, bedding plants, herbaceous perennials and vines. Most container plants are produced in soilless media, representing soilless culture.

Try search for 'Rotating hydroponic gardens', and this is just one example :

http://www.4hydroponics.com : Roto-Gro rotating garden
roto-gro.gif
 
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EarthlingX

Guest
spacecoalition.com : Greenhouse for the Moon, Mars Demonstrated
September 13, 2010

How does your garden grow…if you’re on the Moon or Mars?

Lunar-Greenhouse-229x300.jpg


Answering that question is on the scientific menu of researchers at the University of Arizona (UA) Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC). They are demonstrating that plants from Earth could be grown without soil on the Moon or on the red planet.

Future space explorers can have their extraterrestrial dining table loaded with potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.

The research team has built a prototype lunar greenhouse in the CEAC Extreme Climate Lab at the university’s Campus Agricultural Center.

That greenhouse represents the last 18 feet of one of several tubular structures that would be part of a proposed lunar base. The tubes would be buried beneath the lunar surface – necessary to protect the plants and astronauts from deadly solar flares, micrometeorites and cosmic rays.

The membrane-covered module can be collapsed to a 4-foot-wide disk for space travel. It contains water-cooled sodium vapor lamps and long envelopes that would be loaded with seeds, ready to sprout hydroponically.

Once “planted” on the Moon or Mars, the greenhouse can be up and operating within minutes.


home page : Controlled Environment Agriculture Center
 
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