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. After you've finished checking out those links, take 10% off any $50+ order from our Daily Deals using the promo code DAILYDIRT.
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Filed Under: astronaut, farming, food, iss, mars, micro-gravity, mir, seeds in space, space, space exploration, space station
Companies: nasa


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2015 @ 6:21pm

    burn fossil fuels in space!

    save the planet... pollute space instead...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2015 @ 7:36pm

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      JoeCool (profile), 18 Dec 2015 @ 8:10pm

      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!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    alternatives(), 19 Dec 2015 @ 4:00pm

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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