I know it’s just a plant, and I should be grateful for that.
But…
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Its not that implausible, decent sci-fi authors do the research and the research indicated that having a moon base would make it easier to advance the space age.
At present if we want to go into out of space we first have to overcome Earth’s gravity and the friction of pushing through the atmosphere. That takes fuel which equals mass so there are constraints on how much you can lift off the planet in one launch.
With a lunar base those limits would be a lot higher and we could do more with less it would become easier and faster to spread out into the solar system than just trying to do everything from the bottom of the gravity well.
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That’s a pretty generous interpretation of the term “existing technology.”
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The image used in the article here of the lanky cotton sprout is from the control canister back in China.
The actual cotton seedling on the moon was far less impressive.
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Maybe next time they could send a couple triffids?
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Well, okay, “existing industrial materials.” 
Steel, kevlar, titanium, etc. No need for materials-science breakthroughs featuring new mystery cables of Improbably High Tensile Strength.
It would be an extreme engineering effort, to be sure – but maybe an order of magnitude or so less extreme than an earth-based elevator.
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Holy shit!! I loved that show. Actually bought the first couplevseasons on dvd.
Problem is that it’s very heavy especially if you need to shield it for the plant.
Should have tried potatoes instead.
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This serves to illustrate the real difficulty of growing crops on the moon: the very high energy demands created by 14 days of night. Keeping plants warm and lit through the lunar night means that lunar agriculture relies heavily on artificial light and heat.
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It’s all fun and games until they dig up a monolith.
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It’s my understanding that the climate control failed.
This Kurzgesagt in a nutshell video makes a good case for one:
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very rosy.
i think it misstates the real stages of historical colonization, and completely omits how forced labor and slavery made colonization possible. the only workforce on the moon will be the people we send, history does not bode well for them.
that said. considering the costs they quote vs the costs of 45’s wall boondoggle - i vote moon.
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The history of space travel is full of deliberate one way trips like this one. Laika’s mission on Sputnik 2 being the most infamous. The US scored some public sympathy points for bringing Ham back alive from his Mercury mission.
What NASA doesn’t like to talk about is the number of chimps tested to destruction, in preparation for human launch. Reading between the lines, there were dozens.
So a dead cotton sprout on the moon is pretty small potatoes. So to speak…
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