

In Search of Moon Trees - gnosis
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/13aug_moontrees.htm

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movix
Amazing when you think of how much it cost to send those seeds to the moon how
they didn't keep records of where they planted them back on earth. Are these
the most unique trees on the planet?

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sfphotoarts
not really all that amazing considering NASA even reused/overwrite many of the
tapes from the moon landings...

and besides, they only circulated the moon..

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blogimus
The seeds never actually made it to the surface of the Moon. They stayed with
Roosa, orbiting the Moon 34 times in a metal cylinder. So technically they are
more space trees than Moon trees.

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gojomo
Could the sale of Mars Tree Seeds fund a private sample-return mission to Mars
-- or at least to Martian orbit and back (as with these moon seeds)?

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wlievens
I don't think so. How much would a private sample-return mission cost (I
assume you mean unmanned)? A billion at least?

You'd need a million seeds sold at $1000 each, or a thousand seeds sold at a
million. I don't think you can command that kind of price at that level of
supply either way.

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gojomo
I wouldn't think a seeds-gimmick alone could raise all the funds, but it might
raise a lot. A grove of trees (or other plants) grown from seeds that have
been farther from Earth than any other native organism [1] would have serious
tourist-attraction value, even if replicated in many places.

Wikipedia reports the ESA's 'Mars Express' as having a total budget excluding
lander of about $185 million. So perhaps a bare-bones orbit-and-return could
be done, unmanned and on a leisurely pace, for $300 million.

Sell 5,000 seeds at $30,000/each to raise half the mission cost? Not totally
inconceivable.

[1] disregarding stowaway microrganisms on non-returning probes

