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China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

bbc.com

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Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#61

Post by kamaal »

worldsayshi wrote: post #6
simion314 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why should you have a 100% complete industry, a colony can trade with Earth like countries trade with each other, a colony could trade some rare resources and buy high tech stuff. The main obstacle a colony will have is the initial buildings/bunker with all the life support and safety tech, plus extra redundancy and a backup plan if something bad happens there or on Earth . If the colony would manage to generate…

Sure, becoming 100% self sufficient wouldn't be a reasonable short term goal but I can't imagine there being any product worth trading in the long term over such distance and given such cost for logistics?

That's the same dilemma some one making a new car like Tesla has to face.

So you first make something the rich people want. Like luxury residences in spaces, Elysium like. Like really really affluent neighborhoods for ultra rich. Tourism is another part. Make people go to space, stay for a few earth-days, have them see some spectacular astronomical phenomenon. Sky size theaters, Toy space shuttles like we have dashing cars, Disney land like attractions etc etc.

The other part of course is permanent science labs, where you do high quality research and development. Something like the Large Hadron Collider takes a lot of real estate and resources on earth to build. Eventually that kind of work can be done in space. That will make a lot of smart people want to work in space.

Of course since resources are plenty in space, and energy is just pointing you array of panels at sun. I'm guessing due to the economics of it, a lot of other people might want to stay and work there. Like electricity strapped countries, might want to manufacture in space.

The use cases are endless that way.

Eventually you extend it to everybody else.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#62

Post by richardknop »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #24

Hasn't plant growth been happening for a few years in space? Like the salad they grew and ate in ISS. Is this such big news because it's an ongoing step in living in space or am I missing something. Not trying to take away from the achievement but just curious why this is such a big story. I'd thought there would be more news focus on the dark side of the moon updates or astronomy potential of being there type thing.

But that was done on ISS, in Earth's orbit. This is on the Moon which seems like a bit more of a breakthrough. It probably means we can grow plants on every planetary body in the Solar system. So Moon, Mars. Very promising.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#63

Post by arcticfox »

richardknop wrote: post #62
Gustomaximus wrote: post #24

Hasn't plant growth been happening for a few years in space? Like the salad they grew and ate in ISS. Is this such big news because it's an ongoing step in living in space or am I missing something. Not trying to take away from the achievement but just curious why this is such a big story. I'd thought there would be more news focus on the dark side of the moon updates or astronomy potential of being there type thing.

But that was done on ISS, in Earth's orbit. This is on the Moon which seems like a bit more of a breakthrough. It probably means we can grow plants on every planetary body in the Solar system. So Moon, Mars. Very promising.

What is the breakthrough part here? If we can grow in 1g and 0g, is 0.2g surprising at all?

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#64

Post by adrianN »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #58
adrianN wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate how complicated even simple machines are. Making lubricated ball bearings for example requires high quality steel, precision manufacturing and chemistry that is not trivial if you don't have access to oil.

Yes, that is how we do it now. But what if you only need 3000 ball bearings a month, would other process be more feasible, since the fact it is not economical at scale can be ignored?

You still need high quality source materials and low mechanical tolerances even if you make them by hand. You obviously don't want to recreate planet-spanning supply lines, but even getting good steel from ore is highly nontrivial.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#65

Post by 908087 »

k9s9 wrote: post #19
worldsayshi wrote: post #2

To me it seems that the greatest obstacle to space colonization would be maintenance and production of materials and technology needed to sustain and expand the colony. Seems like the last step for truly becoming self sustaining. You'd need extremely small scale factories that can build everything needed for a modern civilization. I wonder what that would take. What the smallest amount of shipments and time would be.…

Replicators. Feels like no one watches Star Trek anymore. Those writers had more time to think about this stuff than most science labs and engineering teams imho.

I had to double check to make sure I wasn't on reddit after reading this. Good work.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#66

Post by pluma »

kevmo wrote: post #40

It is incredibly disappointing to me that the USA didn't do this decades ago. The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50 years. I understand that perhaps we did not want to continue to fund NASA at such a high rate, but NASA budgets still could have focused on this. Space is the next frontier of humanity's existence. A moon base is a logical, achievable next step in man's space explorati…

> The USA basically won the space race

The USA lost the original space race, then redefined it as "race to the moon", eventually accomplished that and then dropped the ball.

I don't want to denounce the amazing accomplishment of the Apollo programme, but Americans have a tendency to undersell the groundwork laid by the Soviet Union by focusing just on the moon landing.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#67

Post by richardknop »

arcticfox wrote: post #63
richardknop wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that was done on ISS, in Earth's orbit. This is on the Moon which seems like a bit more of a breakthrough. It probably means we can grow plants on every planetary body in the Solar system. So Moon, Mars. Very promising.

What is the breakthrough part here? If we can grow in 1g and 0g, is 0.2g surprising at all?

Well now we have experimental evidence that it's possible. That is quite important.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#68

Post by bayesian_horse »

It doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. If you can grow plants in pressurized compartments in micro-gravity it should work on the moon, also.

It would have been another thing if they used parts of moon soil and the like.

And this wasn't the first time biological material has grown on the moon. The American astronauts brought plenty of growing biological material with them, too.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#69

Post by Balero »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #26
worldsayshi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. Perhaps forcing us to be on Mars can teach us something about sustainability here on earth. Here's hoping.

We already have sustainability on Earth; it's just that it's expensive. There's no new science or knowledge required, just a lot more investment. But, profit margins.

Science and knowledge can help make it cheaper, make those profit margins look better, and have it happen more.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#70

Post by pluma »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #55
kevmo wrote: post #40

It is incredibly disappointing to me that the USA didn't do this decades ago. The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50 years. I understand that perhaps we did not want to continue to fund NASA at such a high rate, but NASA budgets still could have focused on this. Space is the next frontier of humanity's existence. A moon base is a logical, achievable next step in man's space explorati…

> The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50 years. The USA military got what it needed under the cover of a civilian space race. The US didn't chill after that. It put even more money into rockets but those were funded through the military for ICBMs.

Sending things to (actual) space is expensive. Drones are a lot cheaper than orbital weapons and easier to justify than WMDs.

There's not much profit in sending things beyond Earth orbit as Earth is where all the strategic targets are. So other than satellites there's not much to do in space from a military-industrial point of view.

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