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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

#101

Post by charlesju »

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.…

I think the tech that I'm most interested in for the purpose of colonizing other worlds will be 3D printing. In its current form it's no where close to good enough, but if we stretch our time horizon to hundred plus years I do think we can build 3D printers powerful enough to make everything we need to mine and sustain life on other worlds.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#102

Post by EForEndeavour »

Symmetry wrote: post #90
bayesian_horse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Humans need lots of gravity to develop, so any settlement could not reproduce, at least until means to counteract the effects of microgravity are discovered.

Humans certainly need some gravity but whether lunar 1/8 g or martian 2/5 g is enough is something we have no experimental data on.

Very minor correction that does not affect your point: lunar surface gravity (1.6 m/s^2) is only about 6 times weaker than that of earth (9.8 m/s^2), not 8 times.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#103

Post by onetimemanytime »

simion314 wrote: post #4
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.…

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…

>>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.

Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith &c. To ALL to whom these Presents shall come, greeting:.....The Moon Trading Company : )

They need a way to get pure vitamins, fat etc and then mix them on the Moon. Live on shakes or something at least until all is solved.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#104

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

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.…

Shielding off radiation is hard too, on Earth you gave an atmosphere and a magnetosphere. On the Moon or Mars its much harder to do the shield effectively

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#105

Post by EForEndeavour »

slfnflctd wrote: post #37
alex_duf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of my arguments for space colonisation. In the process of colonising other bodies and planets we'll learn how to be more sustainable here. In other words we would use the promise of new resources and exciting new worlds to learn how to avoid destructing our own.

I'm with you on this one. Along the way on the amazing expansion into space, we'll rediscover the critical importance of maximizing efficiency in meeting our basic needs. It would serve us well to get everyone associating that level of efficiency with our greatest feats of technological progress. Also, what better way to get kids on board from a young age? "Susie, if you really want to be an astronaut, you must learn…

I don't understand human psychology well enough to be sure, but I could see it easily going the other way for some people. "We've got a self-sustaining colony on Mars! Finally, we can stop obsessing over such petty terrestrial details like CO2 and plastic waste that we once thought were so important to our species."

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#106

Post by andygates »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #83
kamaal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spin your O'Neill cylinders, that's how you get gravity.

O'Neill cylinders don't work on the moon.

Lunar G isn't microgravity. We genuinely don't have the data, which is why this, Eucropis, and subsequent work is a big deal.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#107

Post by jerf »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #83
kamaal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spin your O'Neill cylinders, that's how you get gravity.

O'Neill cylinders don't work on the moon.

You can still build something that spins at 1G though. It just isn't a cylinder anymore, but something more like a continuous racetrack.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#108

Post by rbanffy »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #104
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.…

Shielding off radiation is hard too, on Earth you gave an atmosphere and a magnetosphere. On the Moon or Mars its much harder to do the shield effectively

There are some caves on the moon that provide shielding and, probably, water since they have perpetual shadow inside them. They can be very attractive places to build future colonies.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#109

Post by andygates »

modzu wrote: post #98
bayesian_horse wrote: post #68

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.

wait its not growing in a sample of regolith? i thought that was the point of the experiment (gravity experiments with plants have been done on ISS, no?)

No, the point is growing in lunar gravity. Things get confused and need training by light in microgravity. We really don't know what they do in lunar g; "it just works" is a great result. Boring but useful.

Re: China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

#110

Post by inn_shopper »

pluma wrote: post #66
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.

Groundwork for a space race was laid out by Germany, V-2 program in particular.
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