> "If we establish a party branch in space, it would also be the 'highest' of its kind in the world," Xinhua quoted Yang as saying.
Really, I love Chinese humor. It's underrated.
China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
11–20 of 132 posts
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#12It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship. Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars. Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.
Competition is good.
Perhaps NASA will get more funding for Mars missions as a result of this. Everybody wins long-term.
It's a shame that it takes a threat of one-upmanship to get people off their asses rather than doing it for the sake of scientific endeavour, but that's human nature.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#13If China manages to do this, then we will have people on Mars in under 2 years.
Competition from china is the only thing I can see spurring the USA into action.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
And growing vegetables on the moon is far too expensive to be practical - moon rocks cost thousands of dollars per gram! EDIT: OK, for the benefit of whoever didn't have a sense of humor, I was suggesting that the astronauts might be planning on bringing some soil with them.
ever heard of supply and demand?
Yep. It gets kind of interesting though when you think about the challenges.
You could have a really good plan to convert martian soil for plant use, but then again, that might fail. This obviously means you can't depend on your garden. Also, what you would have would be a laboratory, not a garden. You would spend a lot more time analysing the food than eating it.
On the other hand, you could carry out a sample return mission, bring some mars dust back, run tests, and land with a solid plan. Only thing is, sample return from mars would make moon rocks look cheap.
Finally, bringing the soil with you would be the most reliable method. It's moon rocks in reverse though! That soil would be, kilo for kilo, the most expensive soil in the history of mankind.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#15It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship. Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars. Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.
I see mixed opinions whenever Elon Musk comes up. Perhaps your sample size of comments for both Elon Musk and China is insufficient. Indeed, when you posted your comment in this thread, there were less than 10 other comments.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#16If China manages to do this, then we will have people on Mars in under 2 years. Competition from china is the only thing I can see spurring the USA into action.
Far from. It takes nearly 2 years just to get to Mars.
Also, China tends to be a fast copier, not a leader. They seem to leave the bulk of development costs to someone else. So I think it's unlikely that they will front the resources it'll take to make a Mars mission possible.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#17But this cannot be of much use, even if they can make an atmosphere somehow, they would need an active core for magnetic field to protect from solar particles/radiation.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#18It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship. Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars. Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.
Look at China today and tell me you want Mars and the Moon to look like that tomorrow.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
ever heard of supply and demand?
Yep. It gets kind of interesting though when you think about the challenges. You could have a really good plan to convert martian soil for plant use, but then again, that might fail. This obviously means you can't depend on your garden. Also, what you would have would be a laboratory, not a garden. You would spend a lot more time analysing the food than eating it. On the other hand, you could carry out a sample retur…
Thinking about this more, I guess hydroponics might be the way to go ;)
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#20As Bruce Sterling says: "I'll believe that people will colonise Mars when they start colonising the Gobi desert."
They probably will - to test equipment, as a part of preparation to colonize Mars.