

Space Farming: The Final Frontier - sinemetu11
http://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/starship-salad-bar/

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krschultz
_The first batch of space-ready lettuce is something of a tease for the NASA
crew — once harvested, it will be frozen and stored away for testing back on
Earth. No one is allowed to eat anything before the plants are thoroughly
vetted for cosmic microbes.

These space germs are often fairly benign, akin to the natural bacteria that
build up in any moist root bank. Russian crews are allowed to consume
vegetables grow on their side of the space station, but microbe standards are
strict and unwavering on U.S. space missions._

That is the strangest part of the whole article. It's amazing how much science
the USSR did on long term space habitation (including growing plants) that
just gets ignored by NASA. Unfortunately I can't recall the title, but I read
a book on the Soviet space program maybe 10 years ago that detailed all of the
progress the USSR made prior to the US SkyLab program, and honestly they were
10-15 years ahead on that stuff compared to NASA.

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Wingman4l7
Mary Roach had a bit in her book _Packing for Mars_ about the huge impact
fresh food has on astronaut morale. She also included a great anecdote about
how some early Russian cosmonauts ended up eating some onion bulbs that were
meant for a zero-gravity plant growth experiment:

 _The diary of cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev includes a story about a batch of
onion bulbs taken on board Salyut as part of an investigation of plant growth
in zero gravity. “As we were unloading the resupply ship, we found some rye-
bread and a knife. So we ate some bread. Then we saw the onion bulbs we were
supposed to plant. We ate them right then and there, with bread and salt. They
were delicious. Time went by and the biologists asked us, ‘How are the
onions?’ “‘They are growing,’ we answered…. “‘Do they have shoots?’ Without
any hesitation we replied that they even had shoots. There was great
excitement at the communication station. Onions have never bloomed in space
before! We asked to speak to the head biologist in private. ‘For god’s sake,’
we told him, ‘don’t get upset, we ate your onions.’”_

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gexla
Astronauts gone wild.

"I don't know about the onions, but the weed grows great up here! We grew
enough up here to last for the next few missions!"

It's interesting to think how long these veggies could last within human
civilization beyond Earth. How would our veggies evolve (only from genetic
modification?) Would they be largely immune from disease in this environment?
What would be the possibility of them hitting some sort of genetic dead end
and us losing our entire supply? Could we create new types of veggies?

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sdfjkl
I've recently gotten interested in this and have built my own aeroponics tank
from a cheap plastic storage box and an ultrasonic fogger (together below $15,
but nutrient and pH/TDS meters add a bit more to it). It's a fun experiment
and worth trying down here in the gravity trap too - you can grow vegetables
in a rental apartment with no garden if you have access to some sunlight (and
even if you don't, by way of artificial light).

This video gave me the idea and instructions:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjWLyA-w4Bo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjWLyA-w4Bo)

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zeteo
>Leafy greens are ideal, ready to be consumed as soon as they’re plucked [...]
The most outlandish crops would be wheat and rice. [...P]lants that need
processing make less attractive candidates for space travel.

Well, these "outlandish" cereal crops currently provide the bulk of calories
for almost everyone on the planet. If you're serious about feeding astronauts
in space, they are exactly the plants that you need to _start_ with. And don't
tell me equipment to grind wheat or hull rice would be complicated, compared
with other stuff that's in orbit already.

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moocowduckquack
If you are serious about feeding astronauts in space, then you need to
classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the whole plant
and needs the least mass of things like water. Leafy plants with minimal root
systems seem like a good start.

Grains have loads of stalk and root that you don't eat, tend to need a lot of
water and need extra equipment in preparation and are often used as powders,
which easily form combustible suspensions in low gravity.

~~~
zeteo
>you need to classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the
whole plant and needs the least mass of things like water

Maybe if you don't care about total area. Stalks and all, grains and tubers
are the most efficient at transforming square footage of sunlight into edible
calories; water would get completely recycled in any case.

~~~
azernik
Square footage of sunlight is not necessarily the limiting factor in space as
it is on earth; (solar) energy for grow lights is cheap, pressurized volume is
very very expensive. And even if water is recycled, tying a certain amount of
it up in your food production system still has a cost.

~~~
flogic
Scaling to sustainable numbers though heat rejection will be a serious
consideration. Plants essentially convert light to chemical energy that would
then sustain the astronauts. The catch is plants aren't really that efficient.
They're around 1% if I remember rightly. That means there would be 99 people
worth of additional heat for each one you're feeding full time.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Trying to argue on the basis of photosynthesis being inefficient doesn't
really help, I mean sure PV is more efficient in energy conversion, but you
can't eat electricity. So given they'd be eating plants anyway, eating ones
that have not been shot up the gravity well is probably more efficient.

~~~
flogic
My point was that for the current ISS, you're talking about designing,
building, launching, and attaching more infrastructure.

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mflindell
Why is everything always the final frontier? Its kind of depressing that they
said that space is the FINAL frontier. Does that mean we have nothing to
aspire to after that? Now apparently the new "final frontier" is lettuce.

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zem
i think the theory is that, "space" going on forever, it is one vast, unending
frontier beyond which there can be no others. also (seriously) the phrase
"final frontier" being alliterative gives it a lot of memetic staying power.

~~~
mflindell
I'm sure back a few hundred years, sailors would have claimed that the other
side of the ocean is the final frontier. Seems like just a way of looking at
it to entice people into believing in a cause.

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krapp
There was something on the other side of that ocean, though, besides more
ocean.

~~~
mflindell
Well we know that now, they wouldn't know whats behind the ocean back then.
Remember the idea that the earth was flat?

At the moment we are at a point in time where we cant see the end of space but
there might be another "ocean" at the end, who knows!

~~~
aninhumer
>Remember the idea that the earth was flat?

Actually this is a common misconception. Educated people have known the earth
was spherical since the birth of astronomy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth)

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coin
-1 for disabling pinchzoom for mobile devices. I wish there were a browser setting to disable the disabling of pinchzoom.

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yetanotherphd
How long before astronauts are blogging about how their space farm saves on
transportation costs and stimulates their local economy?

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shire
Saw something similar to this on BattleStar Galactica. It's amazing how every
Sci-Fi I've watched is becoming more and more practical.

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oceanician
would love to see this done in space:
[http://www.biosphericproject.com/frontpage](http://www.biosphericproject.com/frontpage)
(A biospheric greenhouse project in Salford/Manchester, UK.

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greedo
Reminds me of Silent Running.

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chrismealy
Oh good lord, just send a robot instead.

