Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/15/this-is-the-first-plant-grown.html
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No weed? Getting high on the Moon would be cool.
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Expensive to harvest though.
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The ability to grow plants in space is seen as crucial for long-term space missions and establishing human outposts elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars.
Ironically, probably not the Moon, though. Turns out that Moon dust is toxic as hell, based on current research. Living on a Moon base would probably be like living in an asbestos mine.
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Hmph. I would be more impressed if it was growing in the stark vacuum of space.
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Do you want Space Kudzu? Because that’s how you get Space Kudzu.
Eventually it attracts enormous mutant star goats.
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So the Chinese are growing cotton (admittedly only 1 plant) on the Moon?
I wonder how many of them have read and taken to heart the bit in The Martian where Mark Watney says that by growing potatoes on Mars, he’s effectively legally colonized it. “In your face, Neil Armstrong!”
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I have been intrigued by the fretting this moon landing has caused among the old Space Race generation and the Neo America Firsters: “Hopefully this landing will kick America’s ass into gear”, “China will claim the moon just like South China Sea”, “NASA needs to get their shit together”, etc etc.
I would hate for space to become the next trade/resource war front, but it’s likely inevitable.
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The lawyers will argue they’re not growing anything “on the moon” since it’s in a machine that sits on the moon, not in the lunar soil. And it’s growing in material that came from Earth. Fine points, maybe, but slicing the baloney ever thinner and putting camels through the eyes of needles are required study in law school.
What I’d like to know is, since they’re on the dark side of the moon, the side that never gets any sunlight, why are the pictures so bright?
Ownership at this scale will involve weapons, not paper and pen.
Please please please tell me this is missing a (/s) somewhere!
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Just sharing a source.
We’re already ramping up here in the US of A. Organize all the Space based operations into a single military branch and then throw an unknown amount of loosely budgeted cash at it. We’ll be dropping troops off of big “falcon” rockets all over the world and trying to make bases on the moon in no time.
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Moon Base Salad Bar? Yes, it can be done, we have the technology.
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That’s not the movie that I was thinking of when I saw this article.
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Far out, dude.
Thankee! /tips hat (I saw something about it in New Scientist a while back, but couldn’t even remember when.)
I can’t imagine a single cent of that going towards any sort of space exploration or space bases. It’s going to be all monitoring of satellites and orbital weapons and maybe hypersonic shuttles to send marines anywhere in the world in a few minutes (and at enormous, prohibitive cost).
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Come on, man, you gotta give the conspiracy bunny fish some kind of bait to rise to.
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Came to check. Undisappointed (appointed?). Left happy. Thanks.
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Cosmic Cannabliss could become more valuable than Spice.
Take a walk on the Dark Side - and the Chinese girls go doot-da-doot etc etc etc.
Grown in hydro and without the impediment of much gravity it would would probably grow as high as a Sequoia.
But rather than grow it there what about just taking dope seed to space? The Chinese have had a lot of success with horticultural and agricultural crops by taking seed up for a few orbits to get irradiated.
