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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
:And then you'd need some of the astronauts who like to garden to take :care of the farm plants. But not everyone is into gardening. : Why would they have to like to garden? Most people make their livings doing things they don't like. That's why 'work' is a 4-letter word. Yes, but the astronauts will be busy working on more important stuff, research, building the structures and so on, and they will need time to relax. "Now I gotta do farming? Forget it, just pack and send up a few more boxes of frozen veggies...". Sure, you could send more astronauts, but they place that much bigger demand on the moon base, and thus things won't "scale" in favor of having "farmers", at least not at first. Of course, if you send up a biologist on a research mission, then the farming could work. Not practical. How are you going to get your 'simulated low gravity'. Keep in mind the size of the Shuttle bay. True, but you might be able to pick out some plants that are physically small and guaranteed to grow. Small bean plants maybe. Though having a flywheel in the shuttle bay could make maneuvering the shuttle a little more interesting... |
#12
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
robert casey wrote: Of course, if you send up a biologist on a research mission, then the farming could work. Particularly when the plants mutate the way the salmonella did in space, and the female biologist is chased around by a eight-foot-long horny banana and forced to defend herself with a pointed stick. Not practical. How are you going to get your 'simulated low gravity'. Keep in mind the size of the Shuttle bay. True, but you might be able to pick out some plants that are physically small and guaranteed to grow. Small bean plants maybe. Though having a flywheel in the shuttle bay could make maneuvering the shuttle a little more interesting... I don't think beans are a good choice in a atmospherically closed environment. Pat |
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
I don't think beans are a good choice in a atmospherically closed environment. Good point! :-) |
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote: Particularly when the plants mutate the way the salmonella did in space, There you go again, exaggerating. The bacteria didn't mutate. There was no genetic difference between the cells that made the flight and the cells that remained earthbound. The difference was in the way the bacterial colonies developed; in the absence of gravity and associated fluid shear forces, they formed "biofilms" which are much more resistant to acids and leukocyte attack. The same super-salmonella colonies can be created without microgravity by carefully controlling the fluid shear effects even in normal gravity. and the female biologist is chased around by a eight-foot-long horny banana and forced to defend herself with a pointed stick. Oh, you're back to being silly again. I wish there were some way to tell *before* I take the time to treat your posts seriously. |
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:20:41 -0400, in a place far, far away, Alan
Anderson made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: In article , Pat Flannery wrote: Particularly when the plants mutate the way the salmonella did in space, There you go again, exaggerating. The bacteria didn't mutate. There was no genetic difference between the cells that made the flight and the cells that remained earthbound. The difference was in the way the bacterial colonies developed; in the absence of gravity and associated fluid shear forces, they formed "biofilms" which are much more resistant to acids and leukocyte attack. The same super-salmonella colonies can be created without microgravity by carefully controlling the fluid shear effects even in normal gravity. and the female biologist is chased around by a eight-foot-long horny banana and forced to defend herself with a pointed stick. Oh, you're back to being silly again. I wish there were some way to tell *before* I take the time to treat your posts seriously. My time-saving heuristic is to never take the time to treat Pat's posts seriously. Particularly since he rarely does. |
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
robert casey wrote:
: : :And then you'd need some of the astronauts who like to garden to take : :care of the farm plants. But not everyone is into gardening. : : : : Why would they have to like to garden? Most people make their livings : doing things they don't like. That's why 'work' is a 4-letter word. : :Yes, but the astronauts will be busy working on more important stuff, :research, building the structures and so on, and they will need time to :relax. : Same argument applies, whether they happen to 'like' farming or not. Either farming is something you need done or it isn't. If it isn't, then it won't get done. : : Not practical. How are you going to get your 'simulated low gravity'. : Keep in mind the size of the Shuttle bay. : : :True, but you might be able to pick out some plants that are physically :small and guaranteed to grow. Small bean plants maybe. Though having a :flywheel in the shuttle bay could make maneuvering the shuttle a little :more interesting... : You also have to look at your 'on orbit' time limit with the Shuttle. The cheapest way to run this test may be to establish a Moon base and try it there. -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
robert casey wrote:
Technically it's still half day and half night, irrespective of the length of the day, and the driving technology is energy storage for lighting. However, I think they were relying on the polar crater thing. I hate to have to build a storage system that can run lights bright enough to grow plants. It takes a lot of light to drive photosynthesis, much more than that needed for human color eyesight. I think I agree. But I'm wondering, you don't need the plant to thrive or grow in those two weeks, just survive. I wouldn't be surprised if 5 minutes of intense light every other day would be enough for many plants. Possibly keeping the place sufficiently warm for those two weeks would be a bigger problem than light. Alain Fournier |
#18
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
Alan Anderson wrote: In article , Pat Flannery wrote: Particularly when the plants mutate the way the salmonella did in space, There you go again, exaggerating. The bacteria didn't mutate. There was no genetic difference between the cells that made the flight and the cells that remained earthbound. The difference was in the way the bacterial colonies developed; in the absence of gravity and associated fluid shear forces, they formed "biofilms" which are much more resistant to acids and leukocyte attack. The same super-salmonella colonies can be created without microgravity by carefully controlling the fluid shear effects even in normal gravity. For starters, that was a joke, and I probably should have stuck a smiley on it But despite whether the things mutate in orbit or simply grow in a different manner, if they become variable in form or effects from their normal development on Earth as they grow, and that difference changes how people are affected by contact with them, then you gave a problem on your hands, as our medical science probably isn't ready to deal with them in their changed form. and the female biologist is chased around by a eight-foot-long horny banana and forced to defend herself with a pointed stick. Oh, you're back to being silly again. I wish there were some way to tell *before* I take the time to treat your posts seriously. Well, if you actually were to read a whole sentence or three before replying you might know. But that could take nearly thirty seconds, so you probably don't have time for it.* It's not like I'm cranking out "Moby Dick" here. :-) Besides, some people actually liked my funny postings...back before I said the Shuttle was a piece of crap from the economic and safety aspects: http://www.zip.com.au/~psmith/HallOfFame.html And rubbed everyone's noses in it by pointing out what I wrote about a Shuttle breaking up on reentry back at the end of 2001: "My personal nightmare scenario in this regard is having a shuttle start it's re-entry...and around ten minutes later, all this stuff that looks like chaff starts appearing on the radar scopes... and because it happened during communications blackout, you don't have a clue about what happened...unless you can find the scorched remains of the flight data recorders - which are somewhere in a re-entry footprint around a thousand miles long." Here's the thread: http://tinyurl.com/2zmrok Here's the chaff: http://www.solcomhouse.com/Columbia_...d_by_radar.jpg Here's the flight data recorder: http://history.nasa.gov/columbia/Tro...hotos/OEX3.jpg And here's the debris footprint: http://history.nasa.gov/columbia/Tro...earchmaplg.jpg Although they never found any of it, it started shedding parts over California, around 1,000 miles away from where it ended up. I hope I never see Nightmare Scenario #2 occur: one SRB igniting on liftoff, and the other one not igniting. That would be like seeing something resembling a volcanic eruption, although like Columbia, the crew would at least have a mercifully fast death, which is more than some of Challenger's crew probably did. The scenario the Challenger investigation was concerned about was a SSME catastrophically failing during its burn. They thought that was very likely given enough launches. *As an aside, I actually caught "Entertainment Tonight" a couple of days back, and was downright amazed by it - a "news" broadcast with fifteen second long commercials and ten second long stories. You can tell which country has a serious problem with methamphetamines, crack, and caffeine abuse. Attention span has dropped to virtually zero. Even Walter Winchell would have a hard time keeping up with reporting at this speed. :-D I suspect the war in Iraq isn't unpopular due to expense in national treasure and lives, but rather that we've lost interest in it, like a TV series that has run one-too-many seasons. The ratings have dropped severely as the years go on, and even that rumored "Iran: WW III" spin-off series doesn't look like it's got the boffo biz potential of WW II. I think they jumped the shark when they hung Saddam. Always keep the villains possibly alive and plotting somewhere, just waiting for a reappearance when you least expect it. It worked for Lore and Ernst Stavro Blofeld; it would work here too. Remember what a great plot twist it was when Napoleon got off Elba? Wouldn't it be cool if Saddam had a _clone_, and that's the one they caught? And it works for the good guys too. Remember how the Romans and Sanhedrin weren't expecting Jesus to pull a zombie move on them? Now _that's_ a movie title: "Jesus Christ Has Risen From The Grave"....then he goes Neo, and flies off into the sky. And the Apostles become this super-religious Shaolin theological hit team, traveling the world and doing weird Zen **** to people's minds, like asking them why they are like a mustard seed that's lying among the lilies of the field and that people are tossing rocks at. But the audience knows the Big Guy is coming back in the sequel, and then some major league ass-kicking is going to occur. Get me Mel Gibson on the phone, pronto! So we run with the concept. and make it relevant to today. They go over to Reagan's grave....and guess what? _The ****er's empty_! You know why? Because he's pulled a Jean Grey, and now he's back as "Dark Ronnie". And we can even make him African-American in his new hip and urban avatar! But he's internally conflicted, and can't figure out if he wants to stay Republican...or become a Black Panther. The thing writes itself. Get me Stan Lee on the phone, pronto! :-D Pat |
#19
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
Alain Fournier wrote: I think I agree. But I'm wondering, you don't need the plant to thrive or grow in those two weeks, just survive. I wouldn't be surprised if 5 minutes of intense light every other day would be enough for many plants. Possibly keeping the place sufficiently warm for those two weeks would be a bigger problem than light. Intense lunar surface light unfiltered would probably fry it inside of five minutes. Looking at unfiltered sunlight in space will cause permanent blindness in around ten minutes. The only unfiltered window on the Shuttle is the one in the entry/exit hatch, and they keep a cover over that so you don't burn your eyes out while sitting on the toilet. Plants need sunlight the way we need water, but I wouldn't suggest downing around ten gallons of it at once so you get a couple weeks worth in one sitting. :-) Pat |
#20
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Keith Cowing Thinks NASA Will Grow Plants on the Moon
Pat Flannery wrote: The ratings have dropped severely as the years go on, and even that rumored "Iran: WW III" spin-off series doesn't look like it's got the boffo biz potential of WW II. Already getting bad reviews pre-production: http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/arti...icleID=2779962 "He didn't mean it! For God's sake, just because he said it, doesn't mean he _meant_ it!" :-) Assuming humanity actually survives this administration, I've got to read a really big book about it, tracing its history week-by-week, with photos of all the key screw-ups...it's going to run hundreds of pages, easy. Pat |
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