China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

Post by UnFleshedOne » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 7:46 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #63

kibwen wrote: post #51

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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

Post by geuis » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

tocomment wrote: post #48

Could curiosity give us a good enough picture of the soil composition on mars that we could recreate it on earth and practice growing plants?

Post by saraid216 » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 8:08 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #81

MichaelApproved wrote: post #16

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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.

> China tends to be a fast copier, not a leader Wasn't there a famous Chinese guy who said something like "never underestimate your adversary". In the past that might have been true, but things change. Just one example A lot of people have been educated in the US, and are going back to china to start companies.

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 8:40 PM UTC

takluyver wrote: post #80

jws wrote: post #64

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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…

I think the light would be sufficient for plants, but I don't think insulation would be enough without a heat source. Now, you could lug loads of chemical fuel all the way from earth, or... Break out the nukes ;-)

Post by robryan » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

takluyver wrote: post #58

xyzzy123 wrote: post #52

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Hmmm, I think the moon might still be easier. On the moon, you'd have to run pretty much ecological "closed system", perhaps with oxygen and water supplemented by industrial processes. However, rapid resupply is possible, and non-fatal mistakes correctable. On mars you could get away with a lossier system (seems to me, easier access to outside air, water, nutrients), but resupply is so much harder...

I suspect you're right, but I think the biggest factor is simply getting the humans there in the first place. The journey to Mars would take much longer - meaning the ship has to carry much more food, and more capacity to produce heat and regenerate oxygen. Crews do stay a few months on the ISS, but they can be resupplied from Earth.