I stopped reading at "develop their own sources of ... water"
China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
61–70 of 132 posts
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#62I'm all for this, the current policy of "don't contaminate Mars with organic materials" brings us nowhere, let's put some life on there and see what happens!
I'd be a big fan of sending loads of bacteria with the potential to survive, and some water and stuff, to Mars. Just to see what happens. Hey, the Martian environment would be a "gross evolutionary pressure", right? :)
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The incentives for colonising the Gobi desert are vastly smaller than for a (small) colony on Mars or the moon, even just in perceived prestige.
But the costs are also vastly larger, and the payoffs likely smaller. And prestige? 1/3 of the Earth's land surface is covered by desert. If you could suddenly transform that from a life-hostile to a life-flourishing environment, you'd win as many Nobel Peace Prizes as they can possibly stamp out.
Transforming the desert into a life flourishing environment is really easy, you just have to add enough water. I believe that's how they do agriculture is large parts of Africa. It's of course quite expensive to do so if you can't get the water from, say, an aquifer. Sometimes you can even flood the whole area, if you want to
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#64How well could this work? On the plus side (for plants), the Martian atmosphere is about 95% CO2. Even though the total pressure of the atmosphere is much less than our own, the partial pressure of CO2 is still about 20 times higher (erring a bit on the generous side). On the other hand, Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the sun, so the intensity of sunlight is less than half, and temperatures are correspondingly c…
Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the sun, so the intensity of sunlight is less than half
Don't break out the nukes yet…
No cloud cover is going to push up the average insolation, plus a thinner atmosphere will absorb less. Dust will bring it back down some amount.
Temperature could be handled with insulation. Aerogel might be good here. A thin layer of glass sufficiently hard to survive the blowing dust and then a layer of aerogel to retain heat but still pass most of the light.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#65How well could this work? On the plus side (for plants), the Martian atmosphere is about 95% CO2. Even though the total pressure of the atmosphere is much less than our own, the partial pressure of CO2 is still about 20 times higher (erring a bit on the generous side). On the other hand, Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the sun, so the intensity of sunlight is less than half, and temperatures are correspondingly c…
> So let's assume we rig up bright lighting to grow our plants.
Sorry, but this is missing the point in as big a way as possible if you are using a nuclear plant. Even providing half intensity sunlight for large scale agricultural purposes is not feasible from an economic standpoint. Use the intensity of sunlight that's there. You just have to accept higher acreages and longer growing times. That would still enable civilization.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#66How well could this work? On the plus side (for plants), the Martian atmosphere is about 95% CO2. Even though the total pressure of the atmosphere is much less than our own, the partial pressure of CO2 is still about 20 times higher (erring a bit on the generous side). On the other hand, Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the sun, so the intensity of sunlight is less than half, and temperatures are correspondingly c…
If you have a nuclear reactor or extensive solar panels, you may just as well use it to split CO2 into O2 and CO (monoxide gas can also burned as fuel). Plant photosynthesis is rather inefficient if your goal is a breathable atmosphere. If the goal is biomass for food, then just call up Monsanto for a few space-dense crops.
It would probably easier to oversize the powerplant (to generate oxygen, growlights, melt water, treat air and waste) than to try to bring along a whole biological ecosystem. On the first few trips at least...
The advantage with the powerplant approach is that you can live anywhere with rock and ice in the soil (most airless planetoids) or CO2 and water in the atmosphere (Venus, Mars or the gas giants).
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#67Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the costs are also vastly larger, and the payoffs likely smaller. And prestige? 1/3 of the Earth's land surface is covered by desert. If you could suddenly transform that from a life-hostile to a life-flourishing environment, you'd win as many Nobel Peace Prizes as they can possibly stamp out.
Transforming the desert into a life flourishing environment is really easy, you just have to add enough water. I believe that's how they do agriculture is large parts of Africa. It's of course quite expensive to do so if you can't get the water from, say, an aquifer. Sometimes you can even flood the whole area, if you want to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
> I believe that's how they do agriculture is large parts of Africa
Adding lots of water is how California turned into an agricultural powerhouse.
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the costs are also vastly larger, and the payoffs likely smaller. And prestige? 1/3 of the Earth's land surface is covered by desert. If you could suddenly transform that from a life-hostile to a life-flourishing environment, you'd win as many Nobel Peace Prizes as they can possibly stamp out.
Transforming the desert into a life flourishing environment is really easy, you just have to add enough water. I believe that's how they do agriculture is large parts of Africa. It's of course quite expensive to do so if you can't get the water from, say, an aquifer. Sometimes you can even flood the whole area, if you want to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
That's an interesting link, but it doesn't really discuss the ecological effects of such a project regarding human habitablity in surrounding areas. I'm more hopeful for something like the Green Wall of China[1], but aggressive enough to actually reclaim desert rather than merely halt its advance. It's also a plus if it works on a timescale of less than a century. :)
Though we should also note that turning desert into (ideally) arable land could have disastrous unforeseen effects; consider how much of the Amazon is fertilized by the Sahara.[2]
Re: China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars
#70China has been doing great lately, but this sounds like a case of Icarus to me.
You've got it wrong.
Mars is further from the sun.