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China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

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Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

#21

Post by xyzzy123 »

jcfrei wrote: post #6

would've been interesting to know what kind of vegetables.

Ah, found it: this is a much better link for the story: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90786/8044143.html

"During the experiment, four kinds of edible vegetables, namely lettuce, leaf lettuce, gynura bicolor and sonchus oleraceus, were planted in a 36-square-meter area to absorb the carbon dioxide exhaled by the two astronauts and provide them with oxygen and 30-50 grams of fresh vegetables per meal per person."

Google tells me you need 1 ton of soil to cover 30m^2 to a depth of 25cm. So now I'm interested to know if/how they're optimising for mass efficiency.

Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

#23

Post by redial »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #16
vitno wrote: post #13

If 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.

Kind of like Microsoft? ;)

As an aside, as a Non-US citizen of the world, I applaud any effort to get outside of our planet, even more so if they are as ambitious as this one.

Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

#25

Post by draq »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #14
draq wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

or we can just eat algae.

Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

#27

Post by xyzzy123 »

Achshar wrote: post #17

But 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.

Their experiment was using a closed biosphere, so they're bringing the atmosphere with them.

Really, I think the original article was terrible; it omitted important details to make the whole thing sound more silly. Closed biological systems are an interesting field of research.

I'm not sure about radiation levels on a mars mission, but if we can solve the problem for humans, it should be solvable for plants/algae.

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