
China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout - echevil
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46873526
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worldsayshi
To me it seems that the greatest obstacle to space colonization would be
maintenance and production of materials and technology needed to sustain and
expand the colony. Seems like the last step for truly becoming self
sustaining.

You'd need extremely small scale factories that can build everything needed
for a modern civilization.

I wonder what that would take. What the smallest amount of shipments and time
would be. Would guess that electronics would be one of the last things you'd
learn to make yourself.

~~~
simion314
But why should you have a 100% complete industry, a colony can trade with
Earth like countries trade with each other, a colony could trade some rare
resources and buy high tech stuff.

The main obstacle a colony will have is the initial buildings/bunker with all
the life support and safety tech, plus extra redundancy and a backup plan if
something bad happens there or on Earth .

If the colony would manage to generate enough oxygen,food, water and energy
for itself that is the important first step. Next step would probably be
producing the heavy parts they need for expansions like metal or similar solid
materials for walls and machinery, the lighter parts could be sent from Earth.

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worldsayshi
Sure, becoming 100% self sufficient wouldn't be a reasonable short term goal
but I can't imagine there being any product worth trading in the long term
over such distance and given such cost for logistics?

~~~
richardknop
Water possibly could be of great value in the future? Moon has plenty of
drinking water. Maybe gold, not sure if there’s gold on the Moon?

~~~
pjc50
Ah yes, the entirely viable project of moving water from a bone dry vacuum
rock to a planet 2/3 covered by water.

I'm not sure it would be viable to return gold from the moon even if the moon
was made of solid gold.

~~~
stcredzero
_Ah yes, the entirely viable project of moving water from a bone dry vacuum
rock to a planet 2 /3 covered by water._

Water as a space resource is primarily talked about for use in space.

 _I 'm not sure it would be viable to return gold from the moon even if the
moon was made of solid gold._

It turns out it's a lot cheaper to return stuff from the moon, than it costs
to send it to the moon. This is especially true if the stuff is dead, and you
don't mind subjecting it to 10's of thousands of g's and you can use
electromagnetic accelerators running in free vacuum on the surface, instead of
rockets.

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CodeSheikh
Is it a misleading article since every thing happened in a contained simulated
environment and NOT on the Moon? "The plants are in a sealed container on
board the lander. The crops will try to form a mini biosphere - an artificial,
self-sustaining environment." Only takeaway I can think of is the growth
possible in a low-gravity environment

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Sir_Cmpwn
Does anyone know where I can find a full write-up of this experiment? I want
to replicate it here on Earth but I've been having a hard time finding the
info. Documents in Chinese are fine, if you have them.

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echevil
[http://news.cqu.edu.cn/newsv2/show-14-16860-1.html](http://news.cqu.edu.cn/newsv2/show-14-16860-1.html)

This is from the university that lead the experiment. A control experiment was
done as well

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thank you!

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vectorEQ
all i read was: And it's worth reiterating that there are already nearly 100
bags of human waste on the Moon left behind by the Apollo astronauts

and thought.... what a won-der-ful world :D

~~~
dear
That can be used to fertilize the sprout!

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Gustomaximus
Hasn't plant growth been happening for a few years in space? Like the salad
they grew and ate in ISS.

Is this such big news because it's an ongoing step in living in space or am I
missing something.

Not trying to take away from the achievement but just curious why this is such
a big story. I'd thought there would be more news focus on the dark side of
the moon updates or astronomy potential of being there type thing.

~~~
Ivoirians
What I heard is that we have data on plant growth on Earth (1G) and on the ISS
(0G), but not at reduced gravity like on the Moon (.17G).

~~~
bayesian_horse
It would be easier to produce the .17G on the ISS (with a centrifuge) than
putting these seeds on the moon.

~~~
andygates
That's so not the case (mostly for reasons of size) that the Germans are
flying Eucropis as a separate mission right now. It will do spin-simulated
lunar and mars g.

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kevmo
It is incredibly disappointing to me that the USA didn't do this decades ago.
The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50
years. I understand that perhaps we did not want to continue to fund NASA at
such a high rate, but NASA budgets still could have focused on this.

Space is the next frontier of humanity's existence. A moon base is a logical,
achievable next step in man's space exploration. The technology developed and
lessons learned would have broad implications far beyond simply "We have a
base on the moon."

Newt Gingrich talked about this idea in his 2012 campaign for president.
Despite being a fountain of bad ideas in general, the press seized upon this
particular issue as a primary source for mockery of Newt.

This is not to belittle any of the other work NASA has done, much of which is
also extremely important. Space research is not a zero-sum game. But a moon
base is a concrete, achievable (and still awe-inspiring!) goal that both the
scientific and political classes could coalesce around. I hope to see it
during my lifetime.

~~~
MichaelApproved
> The USA basically won the space race... then decided to chill out for 50
> years.

The USA military got what it needed under the cover of a civilian space race.

The US didn't chill after that. It put even more money into rockets but those
were funded through the military for ICBMs.

~~~
pluma
Sending things to (actual) space is expensive. Drones are a lot cheaper than
orbital weapons and easier to justify than WMDs.

There's not much profit in sending things beyond Earth orbit as Earth is where
all the strategic targets are. So other than satellites there's not much to do
in space from a military-industrial point of view.

~~~
dotancohen
There is no friction in space, so things can move much faster and stay there
longer.

Sending a drone to shitistan at 7.8 KM/second is impossible to do in Earth's
atmosphere with today's technology. Likewise for keeping an object airborne
for more than a few tens of hours. In space, things can move quickly and stay
up there for quite some time.

See also the high Delta-V experimental craft, such as the X-37, which allow an
asset to be in space for extended periods of time but also to adjust their
orbit for short-notice action (presumably reconnaissance) at a specific
location.

~~~
pluma
> shitistan

Seriously? This isn't 4chan.

~~~
dotancohen
That's funny, I really thought that I just coined the word. I guess that rule
34 really applies!

~~~
Jaruzel
It's more to do with dissing any -stan country by using the phrase I reckon. I
think we strive to be better than that here.

~~~
dotancohen
I see, thanks. The term -stan just means -land, I used it to deliberately have
a foreign-sounding place for "other". I now know to be more politically
correct.

I'm sitting in a room with people from Uzbekistan and Kazahstan, they have
absolutely no problem with the use of the term!

~~~
pluma
Not saying you intended it this way, but "shitistan" implies a dismissive
attitude towards the Middle East (because "sending a drone" strongly suggests
Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc) by creating a category of "any of those countries
ending of -stan" (implying they're all roughly equal as far as you're
concerned) and via the expletive portraying them as inherently inferior,
poorer, etc. This is basically the level of discourse you expect from 4chan
and its wider ecosystem, not HN.

Keep in mind that "these people who are X say they have no problem when I say
this about X" is a bad test. Even ignoring the fact some people are just too
polite (or anxious or oblivious or ...) to explicitly tell you when you're
behaving badly, that defense is basically a version of "some of my best
friends are black".

This has nothing to do with political correctness. It's just about respect.
Consider it this way: the reason you don't call someone who's black the n-word
isn't that it's offensive but that it's just an extremely bad way to behave
yourself. If you say "black" instead, that may be more "politically correct"
but if your attitudes are the same, it only makes it harder to call you out
but it's not much less hostile.

IOW using a different word doesn't really help if your attitude is the same.
But on the off chance you're blissfully unaware of the public attitude around
"the -stans" (especially post-9/11, especially in the US) maybe just don't try
to be edgy by coming up with what could easily pass for slurs when talking
about things you are merely disinterested in.

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dotancohen
Thanks. For what it's worth, I live in the middle east.

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jloughry
From _The Martian_ by Andy Weir:

"They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially 'colonized' it.
So technically, I colonized Mars."

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samblr
>> The organisms inside have a supply of air, water and nutrients to help them
grow.

Challenge is with respect to maintaining temperature which swing wildly
between -173C and 100C or more.

~~~
auiya
And, you know, cosmic radiation.

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piercebot
Why cotton?

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bayesian_horse
It doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. If you can grow plants in
pressurized compartments in micro-gravity it should work on the moon, also.

It would have been another thing if they used parts of moon soil and the like.

And this wasn't the first time biological material has grown on the moon. The
American astronauts brought plenty of growing biological material with them,
too.

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modzu
wait its not growing in a sample of regolith? i thought that was the point of
the experiment (gravity experiments with plants have been done on ISS, no?)

~~~
andygates
No, the point is growing in lunar gravity. Things get confused and need
training by light in microgravity. We really don't know what they do in lunar
g; "it just works" is a great result. Boring but useful.

~~~
anewguy9000
thanks, that makes sense, and experiments with lunar soil could (have?) been
done on earth

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nyc111
> The plants are in a sealed container on board the lander.

For a moment I thought they were in the open... Since they are enclosed is
there a reason why they should not sprout? The gravity is less but that should
not make a difference.

~~~
duchenne
The temperature might be an issue. The moon surface 106°C during the day,
-183°C during the night.

Also, the sun is brighter in space than an Earth under the atmosphere.

The long days and nights lasting 12 Earth days each might also be problematic.

~~~
nyc111
Still, it would have been interesting to see what happens to the seed on the
surface of the moon. Maybe a cactus used to desert sun could adapt to the
harsh conditions on the moon.

~~~
pjc50
So according to NASA
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/198600...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19860010460.pdf)
plants cannot grow in a hard vaccum, but they require only a very little
oxygen pressure to grow.

Depressurisation is somewhat survivable:
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927953-500-vacuum-o...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927953-500-vacuum-
of-space-no-match-for-the-mighty-radish/) but dehydration starts to happen.
Vaccum is a very effective dessicant.

