DailyDirt: Not Living Off The Land Anymore
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
It’s not always easy to nurture plants so they grow and thrive, but it’s especially difficult without land — and gravity. Farming in space isn’t exactly a common activity, but if any significant number of people are going to live in space for longer than a few months (without re-supply cargo ships or huge stores of packaged food), astronauts are going to need to figure out how to grow their meals. Space station residents have only just started to eat plants they’ve grown in space, so it’ll be awhile before anyone is growing potatoes on Mars.
- Not too long ago, astronauts on the International Space Station ate vegetables grown in space for the first time. A greenhouse for growing plants has existed on the ISS since 2002, but no one on board ate the experiments before. It’s far from a sustainable habitat up there, obviously, but we haven’t exactly perfected sustainable farming techniques on the ground, either. [url]
- The very first space-grown vegetables were aboard the Mir space station in 1990, producing fresh radishes and Chinese cabbage. The first time plants were grown from seeds that were produced by parent plants that were also grown in space happened in 1997. A complete lifecycle (seed to seed) for growing plants in space isn’t as easy as just adding water and setting up some lights. Microgravity and a variety of environmental conditions make it difficult for some plants to propagate. [url]
- The ‘Seeds in Space’ program allowed thousands of students to witness the differences of growing plants in space versus growing them on Earth. The kids observed how plants (rocket lettuce) grew in all directions both in micro-gravity and without a light source. [url]
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Filed Under: astronaut, farming, food, iss, mars, micro-gravity, mir, seeds in space, space, space exploration, space station
Companies: nasa
Comments on “DailyDirt: Not Living Off The Land Anymore”
burn fossil fuels in space!
save the planet… pollute space instead…
Farming Bots
When we really get serious about reducing our impact on the earth we could create tailored plants that could grow any dish that is made from a plant, animal or any combination of the two. We could do aquaculture now, but still would need additional nutrients and still would suffer high failure rates initially. Someday your kitchen will be replaced by something that uses water and power from your house to recycle all of your waste into the best food you could imagine. CHON machines don’t have to be the size of a factory ship once you figure out how nature does it.
Re: Farming Bots
Nah! It’ll all be 3D printers with carts of fats, sugars, and amino acids. You think a steak is expensive now, just wait until you have to get carts from HP for your 3D printer!
we haven’t exactly perfected sustainable farming techniques on the ground, either.
We can – but because the ecological accounting is not done and instead the “cost” is a bunch of 0’s and 1’s there is a disconnect between proper ecological work and getting a larger collection of 0’s and 1’s.