Skip to comments.China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
Posted on 12/24/2012 6:57:18 PM PST by BenLurkin
Chinese astronauts are preparing to grow fresh vegetables on Mars and the moon after researchers successfully completed a preliminary test in Beijing, state media reported.
Four kinds of vegetables were grown in an "ecological life support system", a 300 cubic metre cabin which will allow astronauts to develop their own stocks of air, water and food while on space missions, Xinhua news agency said Monday.
The system, which relies on plants and algae, is "expected to be used in extra-terrestrial bases on the moon or Mars", the report said.
Participants in the experiment could "harvest fresh vegetables for meals", Xinhua quoted Deng Yibing, a researcher at Beijing's Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Centre, as saying.
"Chinese astronauts may get fresh vegetables and oxygen supplies by gardening in extra-terrestrial bases in the future," the report said, adding that the experiment was the first of its kind in China.
China has said it will land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time next year, as part of an ambitious space programme that includes a long-term plan for a manned moon landing.
The Asian superpower has been ramping up its manned space activities as the United States, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its programmes, such as retiring its iconic space shuttle fleet.
In its last white paper on space, China said it was working towards landing a man on the moon -- a feat so far only achieved by the United States, most recently in 1972 -- although it did not give a time frame.
China's first astronaut Yang Liwei said last month that Chinese astronauts may start a branch of China's ruling Communist Party in space, state media reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at marsdaily.com ...
Recently this country has been growing crops in congress. One party grows fruits, the other vegetables.
Bill Clinton is good with a hoe.
Might be hard to locate a big box home center place on Mars, never mind a lawn and garden department. Would be interesting if anyone ever figured out if terraforming, though. I guess, in theory, the road to terraforming involves being able to control the weather on Earth. Since we can't even predict the weather, let alone control it, I think terraforming is a bit of a pipe dream. If anyone figures out how to control the weather, the military applications alone would be mind-boggling.
I would think the hard radiation sleeting through the garden would result is mostly dead plants....
The American cowboy gave way to the petulant adolescent. "It's the [Fill in the Blank] Studid!" We're becoming a nation of know-it-alls who literally know less than nothing since virtually everything we know is actually wrong. We will still be around for a few more years, progressively neener-neenering ourselves into obsolescence.
They'll still be hungry again an hour later.
...oh, and Merry Christmas!
When my kid was eight, I helped her with an original science project for school.
She attempted to grow cabbages in Lunar simulant soil which was supplied by a kind NASA scientist. After Apollo, vegetables were grown in ACTUAL Lunar soil returned to Earth. For some reason, which I don’t think was ever explained, the vegetables in real Lunar soil grew FASTER than the control vegetables grown in Lunar simulant soil created from Earth samples.
The original part was that we made asteroid simulant soil. We chose to create carbonaceous chondrite soil since that is the most common type of near Earth asteroid.
The cabbages grew just fine in Lunar simulant. However, the asteroid soil had too many hydrocarbons in it. It was like trying to grow vegetables in asphalt.
She got a Blue Ribbon.
Lunar soil probably has jagged edgeswhich would scarify seeds, which encourages them to sprout"faster".
Great, ....so the next Chinese transport will take bees, then they will mutate into Martian Killer Bees and swarm every solar eclipse. Even space will no longer be safe....
(Asparagus will still take 2 years to grow...)
And you thought getting fruit cocktail from China was a novelty.
Coming soon to a Walmart near you - fresh veggies from Mars and Moon...
Not to worry, I am a meat eater and figure cows eat enough grass to cover my veggie needs.....
Green Mars, part of a series of novels some years ago, terraforming over a two hundred year cycle.
The Chinese can do it. They can initiate a chain reaction that can given time start an atmosphere. As far as nutrients there is ways to get around that. Microbes can feed off of almost anything, just need the right ones.
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