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posted by mrpg on Friday January 18 2019, @01:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-lose-hope-humans! dept.

First green leaf on moon dies as temperatures plummet

The appearance of a single green leaf hinted at a future in which astronauts would grow their own food in space, potentially setting up residence at outposts on the moon or other planets. Now, barely after it had sprouted, the cotton plant onboard China’s lunar rover has died.

The plant relied on sunlight at the moon’s surface, but as night arrived at the lunar far side and temperatures plunged as low as -170C, its short life came to an end.

Prof Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, who led the design of the experiment, said its short lifespan had been anticipated. “Life in the canister would not survive the lunar night,” Xie said.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by aim on Friday January 18 2019, @02:19PM (10 children)

    by aim (6322) on Friday January 18 2019, @02:19PM (#788234)

    You write this like anybody would want to terraform the Moon... which you'll find pretty much nowhere (unlike, say, Mars).

    The idea is to build closed stations, much like the ISS, but on the Moon surface... or rather underground, for radiation protection.

    The big advantage of having an ISS-like tin can on the Moon would be the ready access to resources, i.e. you can mine the regolith for what you need.

    Once you have those capabilities, you can use what's mined not only for survival, but to build up for further exploration of the Solar System - getting off the Moon being much cheaper than getting out of Earth's gravity well.

    Much the same would be true for an asteroid, but getting it into a useful orbit around Earth may be a tough nut to crack for the near future.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:37PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:37PM (#788239)

    There are two additional big advantages to having a station on the moon:
    1) if you have on the order of a hundred people in the moon station, they are in fact a backup in case humans on earth fail to survive something.
    2) there is gravity, which actually helps a lot with keeping the humans healthy (muscle, bones, eyes and I think there are a few other issues).

    however, I think we should first build a self-sustaining station in Antarctica (what we have is not self-sustaining). And then we can worry about the moon.
    technically a station on the moon means "anything you need for the Antarctica station, plus maintain a breathable atmosphere inside your compound". This includes pressure issues. and it's orders of magnitude cheaper to send astronauts to antarctica.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday January 18 2019, @03:38PM (7 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 18 2019, @03:38PM (#788258)

      What would be the point of a self-sustaining Antarctica outpost, other than as practice?

      I mean sure, it'd be cheaper practice than on the Moon, but practice on the Moon is far more relevant, and even if you fail you leave behind established infrastructure for the next attempt. And unlike Mars, the Moon is close enough that sending help or evacuating in the face of imminent failure are viable options.

      And the moon will be an incredibly valuable resource for expanding into space, even if we mine nothing more than gravel for radiation shielding. Escape velocity from the Moon involves 22x less kinetic energy than from Earth, and the lack of an atmosphere means you can use mass-drivers rather than horribly inefficient rockets to get stuff into orbit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @05:07PM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @05:07PM (#788300)

        The way I look at it is you build up step by step, avoiding costly and catastrophic failures. Why take a big risk, when you can take and manage several smaller ones that cost less overall and allow for higher overall success as well? Jumping to a moon base sounds sexy and fun, but it's too large a jump with too many risks, unknowns and unproven technologies/processes. When you go to the mood, it's better to *know* that you are going to succeed.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday January 18 2019, @06:39PM (4 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 18 2019, @06:39PM (#788352)

          Except, what is the actual cost of catastrophic failure on a moon base? A Mars base would be bad - everybody dies is a very real possibility. The Moon though? Everybody piles into the rocket and gets really thirsty on the trip back home? Then you send a new mission to patch up the habitat, or whatever exactly went wrong, build whatever else you think you need, and try again - virtually all of the "failed" base will still be perfectly serviceable - it was just missing something important. Few already-invested resources will be wasted.

          Necessity is the mother of invention, and until we actually have one foot on the moon, we have no necessity to invent the technologies needed to stay there.

          • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday January 19 2019, @05:56AM (3 children)

            by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday January 19 2019, @05:56AM (#788571)

            > what is the actual cost of catastrophic failure on a moon base?

            the cost of building the base.

            hey, what's the cost of building an turboprop airplane for flying around in space?

            • (Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Saturday January 19 2019, @03:59PM (2 children)

              by Immerman (3985) on Saturday January 19 2019, @03:59PM (#788668)

              Except that cost isn't lost. Try to keep up - if we want to go to space in a serious way, we want a moonbase. So, we try it, it fails, everyone goes home. Moonbase is still there. We go back, build whatever else it needed, and try again. If it takes a dozen attempts before we make something sustainable, so what? Each time we still have everything we built before, little is lost but the cost of transporting the crew and any lost supplies.

              Plus, a catastrophic failure is relatively unlikely - we've got almost 20 years experience keeping people alive and reasonably healthy living in a tin can in orbit - we're just talking about putting another tin can on the moon, where the two biggest orbital problems problems of microgravity and radiation can be easily addressed. The ride home in case of trouble takes a bit longer, but otherwise there's few new problems other than dealing with the dust. And lots of work to do in learning how to build and expand the base effectively, while trying to become more self-sustaining.

              • (Score: -1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Saturday January 19 2019, @08:57PM (1 child)

                by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday January 19 2019, @08:57PM (#788759)

                try to keep up. that's funny. the failure of the moon base is the moon base built wrong, and not usable. not a failure of the AC system that gets replaced. it's impressive the level of stupidity one has to have, to think we should give a "first go" at building a complex structure on the freaking moon before trying it on earth first. to work out any unforeseen issues. I'd tell you to try to keep up, but I don't think you have the IQ to tie your shoe laces together, velcro boy.

                • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:00AM

                  by Immerman (3985) on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:00AM (#788918)

                  Right - because we can make pressure vessels that survive the rigors of orbit and the (fairly) deep sea, but making something that will survive sitting in a thermally stable, radiation-shielded vacuum tunnel under 1/6th gravity? That's way beyond anything we've ever attempted. The only big new challenges would be dealing with the dust, and far more frequent outside access than for the ISS. Those will potentially be doozies, but even if we deal with it completely wrong it's still just a matter of adding a new entry/exit module while abandoning/repurposing the old one - that and a thorough cleaning of the old base and you're back in action.

                  Note that I've said nothing about *building* anything on the moon? Almost every moon-base plan I've seen initially involves deploying, or at most assembling, an Earth-built outpost, something that mostly needs be scarcely more complex than a network of air-tight kevlar tents fastened to palettes to keep them off the ground. More involved early construction on the moon will almost certainly be for the purpose of learning how to build on the moon, with lunar materials, in the only place in the solar system you can actually do that. If you get an expanded habitat, nicer "garage", or whatever else out of it too, that's great, but that's a secondary objective, and if it fails then it serves the primary purpose: figuring out what does and doesn't work on the moon.

                  So the farm doesn't work out right? So what? You're not going to be trying to be self-sufficient out of the gate, except maybe as an experiment to see how well you can do. The beauty of the moon over anywhere else in the solar system is that you can, in an emergency (or when the timing is just right), order fresh equipment and supplies from Earth and receive them in a few days. We're talking a research base here, hoping to become at least a crude mining colony in the medium-term, not a mostly self sufficient colony like we'd need to jump straight to on Mars.

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday January 19 2019, @07:00AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday January 19 2019, @07:00AM (#788580) Homepage Journal

        People don't know this, we did that one. The Antarctica. Only, not in Antarctica. We did it in Arizona. Called, Biosphere 2. I say "we." It wasn't me. Stephen Bannon. He was the CEO of that. And, he told me it was a tremendous success. He told me it was like Survivor. But, not so much alike that they could sue & win. Absolutely brilliant Reality TV. Brilliant concept, pure Ratings Gold. So I hired him -- who wouldn't? But then I saw the "tape" of him talking about it. But, when he was on camera, he's saying, "oh, the Greenhouse Gases!" Very dishonest. So, very proudly, I fired him. He lost his job and he lost his mind!! youtu.be/l_gkBPlLcfQ [youtu.be]

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 18 2019, @05:58PM

      by Freeman (732) on Friday January 18 2019, @05:58PM (#788321) Journal

      While, such a massive event could theoretically happen. I think an event that would decimate the population would be much, much higher. Leaving the people on the Moon as 100 people who hopefully have a way back to Earth. Since, the decimated population likely won't be mounting a rescue for you. Assuming, it was a man mad event, say Nuclear War that decimated the population. It's also entirely possible that a Moon Base would be targeted in such an event. Even, if you weren't caught in the initial blast. If you couldn't get out of dodge, before it got there. You'd be toast.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"