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Astronauts Could Be Growing Beans in Space in 2021
Following the much-celebrated harvest of a head of romaine lettuce aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, astronauts' vacuum-packed vittles may be kicked up a notch as early as 2021 with the addition of space-grown beans. More salad fixings are also in the cards. After that? The galaxy's the limit.
"The dream of every astronaut is to be able to eat fresh food like strawberries, cherry tomatoes or anything that's really flavorful," Silje Wolff, a plant physiologist at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space (CIRiS) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), said in a statement. "Someday that will certainly be possible. We envision a greenhouse with several varieties of vegetables."
Wolff recently wrapped up an experiment where lettuce grew in space in specialized planters that regulate all the water, nutrients, gas and air the plants need.
Though she used artificial soil derived from lava rock as a substrate, Wolff says the goal is for the plants to grow directly in water infused with life-sustaining nutrients. In space, she noted, all the water and food must be recovered, which means that plant fertilization needs to be "as precise as possible."
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 14 2019, @10:55AM (9 children)
It seems to me that they ought to get on the ball and provide an actual rotating module (this [wikipedia.org] was a small hand-wave in that direction, cancelled though it was), or actually get after a rotating space station with any zero-gee required spaces hanging about nearby.
Our space program is so far behind where I wish it was.
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They said: "You weren't listening, were you?"
I thought: "Isn't that a weird way to start a conversation?"
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 14 2019, @03:13PM (8 children)
Why exactly? I mean it'd certainly be nice if you were doing lots of work in orbit and wanted crew, tourists, etc. to be more comfortable / have fewer microgravity health problems. But we're nowhere near that point yet - the only reason we have a space station right now is to provide a sustained project for low risk, low value (economic and srategic) international cooperation and test the effects of microgravity on the crew and various other experiments - experiments that I've heard are often selected mostly to give the crew something to do.
Meanwhile a spinning station means you can't have any microgravity regions without either a space walk, some really fancy airtight rotating connector, or an always-powered "anti-centrifuge" inside a large pressurized space around the central hub of of the station. It also means that you have to make the station far, far stronger to keep it from tearing itself apart. And stronger means heavier, which means smaller, since your available budget is unlikely to expand to fit your ambitions.
Even that CAM module had nothing to do with comfort - instead being a way to test the effects of different amounts of "gravity" on various experiments - which would certainly be valuable since we know microgravity causes all sorts of serious health problems for many/most plants and animals, and it would be nice to know ahead of time if those remained serious at Lunar or Martian levels, since that would put a serious damper on our colonization plans. Not that it couldn't still be done, but making centrifuge habitats on an alien world is considerably more challenging than doing so in space.
But hey, we'll hopefully have SpaceX Starship soon - a whole "more space than the ISS" space station that launches fresh from Earth for every mission. You could spin that sucker on its long axis and turn the whole thing into a giant centrifuge. At 9m across, for 1g at floor level you'd need to spin it at one revolution per 0.235 seconds, or 14RPM. Of course the restricted space is likely to be a problem - air currents are going to tend to push anything floating in the center towards the floor, which will be moving at 6.6m/s = 15mph. Impacts will be dangerous. Perhaps we should reduce it to only 0.1g, then it need only spin at 4.5RPM, and the floor will be moving at only 1m/s=2.2mph
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 14 2019, @05:40PM (7 children)
Because it appears that in order to grow crops easily, something is needed to orient those crops up-and-down. Because microgravity appears to have significant negative effects on humans, and therefore probably pets too, over time. Because a lot of manufacturing techniques rely on gravity, and those are going to be needed to be able to take the next steps towards sustainability.
Yes, we're not there — and that's lamentable, in my view. I'd like to see us trying a lot harder to get there. The current space station is so in need of ground-based support that it's barely a space station at all. The sooner we manage to establish a sustainable presence in space, and the more sustainable it is, the better off we will be for a number of good reasons ranging from as mundane (and attractive) as economic to as existential as the continued survival of humanity and lots of the rest of what inhabits the only biosphere we currently have.
What irritates me is that for the money we waste bombing and otherwise annoying the heck out of various collections of not-quite-white people and building and supporting useless military establishments all over the globe, we could be one heck of a lot further along in space than we are now. Potentially to everyone's significant benefit. It's a real shame. I can barely restrain myself from inserting a long, angry, fyngyr-pointing rant here.
Here's the thing about microgravity: there's no shortage of it. Nor does it have to be that big a deal to get from one location to another in such circumstances. Do it right, you won't even have to do airlock-style gas exchanges. These are relatively simple engineering challenges — as long as you're not operating on what is effectively a shoestring budget. We're trying (actually, not trying, near as I can tell) to build a mansion on the budget for a doghouse.
Perhaps. One of the questions we don't have an answer to is "how much gravity is enough gravity", and we don't have that answer for a whole range of things. People, crops, manufacturing, etc. In any case, already established low-gravity environments await. The moon for example. The problems we have with our gravity well WRT earth orbit are enormously more challenging than getting in and out of lunar orbit. For example, here, a space elevator is so difficult that it's past the edge of what we could do right now, even if funding was unlimited. But a lunar space elevator isn't.
But we're not going to be able to do any of that the way it should be done (that is, well) without having in-space station tech, in-space manufacturing tech, and space travel tech (I don't mean interstellar travel, before anyone jumps on that. That's a whole 'nuther can of worms.)
The real first significant steps will be being able to reach both the asteroids and the moon easily. Hopefully along the way we can establish a sustainable in-space presence. After the former comes profit, and an enormous amount of it for that matter. Because it's quite a bit easier to drop things into a gravity well than it is to lift them out of it. Nature has kindly placed what are effectively unlimited amounts of natural resources in zero g... in many ways, that's the optimum place to get them, to refine them, to manufacture them, and to deliver them from.
A broadly sustainable presence, hopefully quite a large one, could offer us a security blanket WRT disasters here, something else I am very much in favor of. Right now, we're one random event from extinction. Perhaps, if the current round of climate change turns out to be on the darker side of the speculations arising from the indirect evidence we have at hand, that event is already inexorably creeping our way.
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Remember: If we get caught, you're deaf, and I don't speak English.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday January 14 2019, @09:41PM (1 child)
Just a note; we don't need a space elevator to get cheap access to space.
An orbital ring would do more then a space elevator with no new materials required. 80 - 100km steel cables from an orbital ring would be plenty strong enough.
The cost of the first ring would be enormous; but cheaper then a space elevator; estimates range from 10 - 100 Trillion. But once one is up the subsequent ones get exponentially cheaper whilst also providing effectively unlimited solar power.
I doubt the globe has the political will to engage in that kind of mega-project at this stage; but it is far more likely then a space elevator, which requires precision manufacturing at the atomic level to get fibers strong enough, single walled CNT's maybe strong enough.
On the moon; it would be better to build a electromagnetic launch ring; something similar to train cars would take payloads up to orbital velocities and above before releasing them; no atmosphere to slow them down means that they would just lift; past that point onboard power to manover. The same system could de-orbit payloads also, drop a cable to a speed matched train car and let to slow you down while drawing in the cable, store the energy for your next launch.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:11AM
Anything. Anything that works and makes the whole thing practical without constant pollution and many gravities on the way out. :)
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No, I didn't trip. That was a random gravity check.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 14 2019, @11:55PM (4 children)
We're also nowhere close to needing to farm in space (as distinct from on other planets) - that would require a large human presence in one of the most dangerous environments ever discovered by man. Which would serve... what purpose exactly? Nobody is even seriously suggesting we do so. The Moon or Mars make great potential colony destinations because they're rich in raw materials and research opportunities. Space is not. Even when we start mining the asteroid belt (and the entire asteroid belt combined only masses about 5% as much as the Moon), there's no need for a colony, maybe not even any human presence at all.
My point is that we currently have no reason to put people in space long-term, other than as research to see how well they survive for future reference. You want to live in a space station? Great - *you* pay for it - just like all the colonists to the Americas funded the journey and their homestead at the other end out of their own pocket (or debt, or indentured servitude). If you want someone else to fund it, then the first thing you have to answer is: what are they getting in exchange?
You're right that there's no shortage of microgravity - but there is a shortage of reasons for human to *be* there.
Right now, the only reasons I can think of for trying to live in space is if you need human presence close enough to something for real-time telepresence, or even the occasional in-person intervention. (Which brings up another point - a spacewalk to service a rotating space station is FAR more dangerous than from a stationary one, since centrifugal "force" is constantly trying to fling you away) But until we have motive for factories, mining operations, Venusian research outposts, etc. in space we get no benefit from a human presence. And even when we do have such facilities - the "space station" will still almost certainly be at least several meters underground on an asteroid so that the residents don't all meet a early death from radiation poisoning.
> "how much gravity is enough gravity"
That is indeed an important question as we look to colonizing other worlds - and something like the ISS CAM you mentioned would go a long way to answering those questions. What you *don't* want to answer that question is an entire rotating space station - it's stressful for the superstructure to change the speed, and you have to build the thing strong enough to safely survive the maximum speed you might want to spin it at. Not such a big deal for a centrifuge within your stationary space station, but becomes EXTREMELY expensive building a large space station capable of surviving 1g. Keeping solar panels oriented is also real challenge requiring frequent off-axis torques (assuming you put the panels between the "spokes" of the wheel, you have to constantly twist the wheel to keep that face pointed at the sun, which introduces some nasty gyroscopic effects. Any other location means that they usually aren't getting any sun. Fission reactors are an option, but until you get beyond the asteroid belt solar panels have a much better power-to-mass and power-per-dollar ratio)
>A broadly sustainable presence, hopefully quite a large one, could offer us a security blanket WRT disasters here
Firstly, you seem to be talking about other planets, NOT space. And secondly, that is the worst justification I've heard - nothing we do in space will be of any help to the people on Earth - there's no way to get even a significant fraction of the population off in time - it'd be a challenge to even keep up with the birth rate. The only people escaping would be the ultra-wealthy and powerful - which means they have far less incentive to avoid the catastrophe in the first place. Plus, nothing that happens to Earth (short of an engineered plague or nano-bot outbreak) will make it even remotely as inhospitable as Mars - which is probably the next-most-hospitable place in the solar system. The worst-case scenario for global warming is a that we leave the ice age we've been in for the last 2.6 million years and transition back to a hothouse Earth - which will actually be quite lush judging by geologic records, once the ecosystem recovers. The transition will likely take several brutal millenia, and quite possibly cause the collapse of global civilization, but the planet will still be hospitable enough that the survivors don't *need* civilization to survive, and can rebuild after the dieoff so long as the knowledge of how to do so isn't completely lost.
That also brings up another point - civilizations collapse on a semi-regular basis, it's the height of hubris to assume we'll be the fist civilization to avoid that fate. And in space, or on another planet, the collapse of civilization likely means extinction. Maybe the threat of death would indefinitely forestall it - but nobody ever wants their civilization to collapse, and available evidence in the face to the global warming threat is that plenty of people will go to great lengths to deny reality if that's what it takes to continue living in the style they are accustomed to.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:35AM (3 children)
Until we are. But I'm repeating myself; I already stated the why.
Au contraire; I do. 😊 And 1G of stress isn't even close to an engineering problem.
You're thinking inside the box. Any solar panels don't have to be on the station at all, and therefore, they don't need to rotate at all. Presuming, of course, that the thing is solar powered.
No, I'm specifically talking about space.
I didn't mean to imply that everyone on the planet would be saved. I meant to imply that a sustainable presence, specifically a self-sustaining presence, could prevent the extinction of the human race, and that those people already established could be saved. That's a long way out, but it is definitely what I meant to say.
Your imagination has really failed you. Venus is considerably less friendly to human life. The planet could go that way. Also, a sudden change from what we have to something awful would pretty much do us in; the idea that mars is X habitable is sort of a non-starter by comparison because we know that going in, and no one would try to walk around as if it was earth normal in the first place. Likewise, prepared habitats would be earth normal "out of the box." No comparison to a disaster in terms of survivability.
I didn't say "collapse of civilization." I specified extinction.
And as to any "it'll never happen" positions by you or anyone else, the dinosaurs would like a word.
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No, I didn't trip. That was a random gravity check.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 15 2019, @04:54AM (2 children)
>1G of stress isn't even close to an engineering problem.
You're right, it's not. Not until you weigh the cost of the stronger superstructure against the much larger and more capable station you could build for the same price if you only had to withstand half of that.
>Any solar panels don't have to be on the station at all,
True, we could have satellite solar stations for a space station - wireless power transmission is currently fairly inefficient at any distance, but isn't so bad for just a mile or two.
> Venus is considerably less friendly to human life. The planet could go that way.
No. It couldn't. Not unless we burned every ounce of fossil fuel available on the planet, and then burnt down all the forests and grasslands to intentionally cause such an outcome, and quite possibly not even then. It'd probably take global megavolcanos unleashing deep-earth carbon reserves to even put it on the table.
>I didn't say "collapse of civilization." I specified extinction.
Yes, you did. And my reply was that in space, they're the same thing. And civilization collapses far more regularly than planetary extinction events occur. Eventually we'll be spread far enough that the collapse wouldn't take down everyone, a single Mars colony of a few million people though? It'd be touch and go at best. It's better than nothing I guess, and would only get more viable over time.
>Also, a sudden change from what we have to something awful would pretty much do us in;
Are you not aware that there are *already* many vast underground bunkers on Earth, designed to keep chosen members of humanity alive through pretty much any apocalypse? Major governments, various religious groups, and probably several ridiculously wealthy "preppers". The scope of such a habitat that you can build on Earth for a given budget far exceeds what you could build elsewhere. Plus even the onset of most "fast" problems will be measured in decades or centuries, which means plenty of time to build domes over cities, etc. Heck, they considered doing that to some northern cities 50-100 years ago.
In fact that's one of the big things I *do* see planet colonization realistically providing - experience and technologies for creating and operating such semi-closed ecosystems. If domes and arcologies are needed for some reason, it'll be a lot faster and cheaper to build them if there's already mature technology available to adapt to the situation.
And I'm a big fan of getting life off this rock - a lot more of it than just humanity. Eventually *something* will wipe all life off this planet, and it'd be nice if Earth life continued to spread across the galaxy after that happens. So far we have no evidence of life anywhere else in the universe, and I think it's a wonderful enough thing to spread as far as possible. In that same vein, I think the big goal that really justifies learning to live in space is interstellar colonization - we want to have the technology well developed before we take on that challenge. But that's so far in the future that it's not worth making strategic decisions around today - there's so much development that must be done first that trying to anticipate future needs is pointless.
But, what is really needed, before any of that can happen, is a business plan.
I suspect that asteroid colonization will happen naturally - not because there's any need for humans there, but because it will get cheap enough to build well-shielded, self-sustaining space stations that any moderately wealthy group who's sick of broader society will be able to found their own city-state so far away that nobody will bother them. Just as they did time and again here on Earth. I just don't see that there's any motive for the people who stay on Earth to help them pay for it.
I have a similar objection to a Mars colony - I think it's hands-down the best planet to colonize - it just has nothing to offer Earth to justify the long-term ongoing expense. And until we find that, it remains interesting territory for those sufficiently inspired and wealthy to to try to build a world from scratch. I wish them well of it - but I also wish they'd wait until we've had a chance to do a proper search for life, because that would offer a truly phenomenal font of knowledge. And finding native Martian life, assuming it's there, will be far more difficult once Earth microorganisms inevitably start colonizing the planet (Heck, tardigrades might not even have to do any evolving first, just follow the spreading food).
A Moon colony though - that's a bigger technical challenge, but a much smaller logistical one. Excellent for trial runs, and close enough to be a hugely valuable resource almost immediately. With a lunar industrial base, and an unending supply of lunar fuel, oxygen, and concrete for radiation shielding, colonizing orbit and the L-points becomes feasible - not because of any particular need, but because the rich like novelty, so why not? Plus there's all that valuable ore in the asteroids, so they might even turn a profit on the endeavor. And once we have an economically viable foothold in space, then the *real* magic can start.
We have limited resources for this endeavor, and look to be about to have some much more pressing environmental challenges on our hands over the next decades and centuries. If we want our species to maintain a foothold in space through that, then we need to focus on establishing that first precious enabling industry as quickly as possible. We will need to be bold, without being careless or wasting any effort. Would I like an orbital centrifuge testing facility? Yes. But that will be expensive, and we know we want the moon regardless, so lets just go straight for that instead. If we learn that we need to build centrifugal recreation or maternity centers, we'll build those as we need them. We can even use them for testing to determine the tolerable and optimal levels of "gravity". And if the moon *is* sufficient, then we know gravity won't be a problem pretty much anywhere else we'd want to colonize early on.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:03AM (1 child)
Cost? I fully expect the materials to be mined, refined, and manufactured by robots operating in and between the asteroid belt and earth orbit. The materials will be irrelevant; there shouldn't be any shortage and there will be no significant transport costs, or any other costs, either — once an automated presence is established. That's where the money will have to go. Until that step is done, we're just pretending. But having done so, everything else will follow, and rather nicely I think.
Yes, it most certainly could. Which is the very next thing you acknowledge:
Or a major comet / asteroid impact that triggers same. Like I said: Like Venus. Extinction, if all we have is us, here. And of course, a comet or an asteroid could finish us off all by itself.
Again: I am not talking about a Mars colony. I am talking about multiple independent space habitats. Robotically built, as many as seem like a good idea. A lunar colony is a much better idea than a mars colony. Neither our moon or mars are exactly "friendly" to us; but the moon has several advantages, including more concentrated sunlight, less gravity, shorter distance / comm delay / transport from earth, no wind (no atmosphere), no dust storms, and so forth.
Those will work, somewhat, for short-term events. They will not work for longer term events. Certainly they are not a reason to fail to get all of our eggs out of the single basket they currently reside in.
Agreed. Also prudent. Kind of my point.
...and a lot of tech advances, particularly in robotics, because without that, it's all manual labor and progress will make snails look fast.
That's what government is for. To find the reasons and apply the motivation. That's how we here in the USA got to the moon, how we got an interstate highway system, etc. The money is / will be there. It remains to acquire it over time, as needed. Again, automation is likely to be a big part of this. The current economy is all trickle-up into a very few private hands and there isn't enough money in the hands of everyone else. That needs to change, and I am reasonably sure it will. If not, well, then we're probably stuck.
Yes, we're on the same page here. It's a good first step, once we have the materials supply (again, automation) in place. Otherwise all the initial manufactured material has to come from this gravity well, and that will make it much harder than it really needs to be. The most important step is to get started utilizing the resources that are just waiting for us. And for that — machine intelligence has to come along a bit further. Stacked LDNLS [fyngyrz.com] is my guess for what will comprise the initial level of "good enough", but of course I'll be perfectly happy to see something better should it come along.
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Every once in a while declare peace. It confuses your enemies.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 17 2019, @06:04PM
I think we're mainly talking about different timescales - in the long term I'm all for huge rotating space colonies - but the only reason I can think of to build such a thing is because all the more desirable places have already been filled up. And certainly not before you've even decided what the spin rate would be.
>Cost? I fully expect the materials to be mined, refined, and manufactured by robots operating in and between the asteroid belt and earth orbit. The materials will be irrelevant
Right, the same way buildings made of wood, steel, and concrete are free today? There's always an opportunity cost for any decision. You always have a limited amount of materials, time, and production capacity at your disposal, and spending them on one thing means you can't spend them on anything else. Building a thing optimized for one set of conditions, means you waste resources that could have improved it in other ways for a different set of conditions.
>> I think it's a wonderful enough thing to spread [our forms of life] as far as possible.
> Agreed. Also prudent. Kind of my point.
I disagree - I want to see humanity endure and life spread across the galaxy, but I can't think of any rational reason for it. It's art and vanity, prudence has nothing to do with it.
> That's how we here in the USA got to the moon, how we got an interstate highway system, etc.
We got to the moon because we were engaged in a cold-war pissing contest - showing off military technology in feats of glory rather than mass destruction. Profitable for everyone.
We got the interstate highway to facilitate the transportation of important military resources - it was the military who decided on the routes that were to be developed, and the federal funding was explicitly for developing military potential.
Where's the profit or military potential for space colonies? Probably lots of profit to be made mining asteroids, and having orbital weapons - but nothing to be gained by having a lot of people up there with them. Planetary research is potentially profitable, and humans on hand are likely to facilitate that significantly, but there's nothing to study in open space.
When a government funds something, the ideal is that it should be in the best interests of the population paying for it. Space colonization does not do that. At all. The only people who benefit from a space colony, are the people living in the colony. They will always be entirely dependent on imported resources for survival (though for a while they could scavenge those themselves, at least until 100% effective recycling and maintenance is developed), and have precious little to export that couldn't be made more cheaply elsewhere. About the only thing they might offer is zero-G refining or factories - but it's very unlikely that they could be cost-competitve with virtually identical factories that aren't trying to support a space colony.