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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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First Green Leaf on Moon Dies as Temperatures Plummet
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Go to a movie tonight. Darkness becomes you.
(Score: 4, Troll) by eravnrekaree on Friday January 18 2019, @01:58PM (32 children)
If anything, the expirement proves that it would be extremely difficult to near impossible for anything to live on the moon.
Look. Moon colonization is a pipe dream. This is what comes from watching too many Star Trek episodes. But its divorced from reality. It would not be self sustaining and would drain away earths resources to support it. Any gas or hydrogen sent to the moon would likely be blown away by the solar wind due to lack of magnetosphere. It is extremely inhospitable and a very unpleasant place to live. It would be a colossal waste of money without there being any real pragmatic point or purpose to it. Earth is far nicer and by far the best planet we have. We should not jeopardize earth resources or use earth resources for this, it would have to be self sustaining but there is little way of seeing that it can be self sustaining. We should ban any more money on even trying to attempt it, because its a waste of money that could be better spent on making things better here.
People move to Florida because it is too cold at 30 F in a northern city, because they want to live in a tropical climate with beaches. Its not like the moon is some kind of paradise that people are going to be wanting to take vacations to. The place is hellish.
1. Temperatures range from -170 to 120 C.
2. The Moon is bathed in dangerous radiation. There is no magnetosphere. Any water or hydrogen would be blown off into space.
3. The dust is now known to be possibly carcinogenic, like tiny shards of glass.
4. No air, only trace amounts of water.
5. No moon derived energy sources.
6. Requires constant and enormous supplies of energy and technology just to keep anything alive for a short while.
A moon colonization would be an arduous, painful, ultimately vain struggle for survival against impossible elements. Antarctica is a paradise and survival in Antarctica would be a breeze , but you dont see many people wanting to move to Antarctica. The Moon is by far much, much worse.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:06PM (1 child)
you talk like it's a rock floating around in space or something
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Friday January 18 2019, @03:40PM
While in reality it's a rock falling around in space. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aim on Friday January 18 2019, @02:19PM (10 children)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:37PM (9 children)
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)
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)
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)
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)
> 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)
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)
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
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
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
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"
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Friday January 18 2019, @02:36PM (2 children)
You say this as though the same doesn't apply to Mars, asteroids, space station, space ships, Pluto, Ceres, and basically anything that could possibly be used for habitation or survival other than the rock that you're currently sitting on.
So what if something happens to that rock? Throw up your hands and say it was a good run? So what about exploration of the solar system? Throw up your hands and tell everyone who's doing it how impossible it is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:56PM (1 child)
And what's wrong with that? You'll be dead anyway. But if you are unfortunate enough to be on one of those backup locations, what makes you think that you will remain human? You may not even survive without hi-tech products from Earth. Plastics, medicines are made from oil. So far, no oil on other planets, certainly not on Ceres etc. Planets are mostly dead stone; how much can you squeeze out of it? Earth is more than stone, it has biosphere, and that's why we are able to make things. That's why I say that feeble colonies are not an answer. What can make them self-sustaining? Pretty much two things: universal nuclear transmutator and molecular assembler. Last I checked, we still don't have them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @06:27PM
Titan has hundreds of times more oil. It rains oil on Titan:
https://www.space.com/4968-titan-oil-earth.html [space.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @02:37PM (4 children)
Well, one day humans might be living on the Moon. However it will begin with a single order to an artificial intelligence: "Build a city there, hermetically seal it with a dome that is transparent in visual range, but opaque to radiation. Install enough dark matter reactors to power the city." This will take care of the cost.
Not sure, though, why would people choose the Moon. Low gravity will cause damage to the muscles and bones; children may be born with serious defects, unable to ever set foot on Earth. As you say, not much to do there - especially when you have an AI and hordes of robots.
Mars is a bit more convenient, but it is also a barren planet with atmosphere that is close to vacuum. Unless terraformed, Mars is not much friendlier to humans; but it is much more expensive. There is not enough resources on Earth to settle on Mars. Flights to the Moon had a clear political purpose; but Mars has no value, especially no value to the generals. The bragging rights are not worth of the expense.
In other words, nobody settles anywhere until we obtain a cheaper, faster space drive. If it costs $100 to send a ton of cargo to Mars, delivery in 12 hours, then some enthusiasts might want to live there for a while.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by deimtee on Friday January 18 2019, @03:22PM (3 children)
The obvious answer, if you have the ability to build as you suggest, is a retirement home. Ask any old person if they'd like things to weigh one sixth as much, have slow reactions be plenty fast enough to catch stuff you drop. Be able to throw away that zimmer frame and slow dance across the room.
That also takes care of most of the health problems. They won't be having kids, and likely won't be coming back. They are probably already taking pills for bone loss, and being able to move around will probably result in less muscle loss than being immobile on earth.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 18 2019, @06:04PM (2 children)
Considering the physical fitness of current Space going people, the effects are based on prime specimens of humanity. Not ones that are already falling apart. Grandpa might not even survive lift off. Also, old people develop things like Alzheimers and Dementia. I can't imagine managing those on the Moon would be easier than on Earth. At least Earth has an Atmosphere, if they were to somehow wander outside and leave the door open.
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"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @06:25PM
The retirement home idea would only be viable once the colony is up and running and pretty large, thus travel would be pretty regular and a low-G retirement home would be very expensive so they would probably have no qualms making some expensive accommodations for the rich old geezers like fancy flight suits and chairs. They might even be able to do some kind of less efficient "slow" launches to reduce the G forces.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday January 19 2019, @02:12AM
The gp post in this thread posited dropping an AI on the moon and having it build a city, and then asked what you could use the city for.
To be honest, I expect that by the time a retirement home on the moon would be viable, it would also be superfluous due to things like SENS.
Single large advances in tech make for reasonable SF stories, but in real life advances in other fields occur contemporaneously and can totally change the effect of the advance. Decrepit old people in advanced future societies is just unrealistic. There may be some limit to how long the brain can work, but right up until the end it will be housed in a body that is fit, healthy and apparently young.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @03:12PM (3 children)
Good! Following Heinlein, it's always a good idea to have an expert that can tell you that it cannot be done and precisely why. So that we can then go and do it anyway. Not like people don't now live in Antarctica voluntarily or anything right now, either, or that the effort to do so is a tiny enough fraction of an economy to make it doable. But since you showed an interest:
1. Temperatures at the surface are that way. What about underground, since we've known since the early 70s that any potential lunar colonies would exist underground and scientists way back then determined that it might be a viable option.
2. See point 1. What does the "dangerous radiation" do when it has to pass through a surface like lunar regolith?
3. See point 1. "Possibly" carcinogenic means we don't know. The risk would be more for silicosis, which is not a cancer. And sure, that does have to be planned for. OTOH, I don't think people are talking about having open-faced barbeques on the surface. And it's a shame about all those respiratory complications the Apollo astronauts experienced - I'll let you prove that occurred.
4. The jury is still out about subsurface ice deposits the last time I checked, but I'll invite correction. Nice thing about air is that we know how to make and recycle it. Yep, requires support. So does living on some pacific islands but that happens.
5. There's this great big thing called the Sun.... people think they can harness it for energy using this thing called solar energy. And maybe without an atmosphere scattering it this solar energy thing is even more efficient. And then we've got these wonderful things called batteries that can store energy for when you don't have a sun shinging down on you. Maybe you should read up on it.
6. Things require constant energy on Earth too. "Enormous" is a scale judgment as is "short".
Forgive me if I doubt your naysaying and wait for cited and scientific proof about what resources it would take. Or we can just wait for the Chinese to do it anyway. Please tell me you don't think they can or would do it so I can laugh at you outright!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 18 2019, @03:53PM (2 children)
Sure one can dwell underground after one arrives there, but that the appolo guys could SEE solar radiation with their eyes shut led them to develop cataracts far out of proportion to the general population
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @09:30PM (1 child)
How much is "far out of proportion"? All I've read about are increased risk of cataract. Many occupations do indeed have higher risks for some diseases. Oh, and while it is likely I don't think anybody has conclusively proven that light flashes seen by the astronauts were "solar radiation". (Especially since not all astronauts see them). Maybe I'm wrong.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:45AM
I expect those flashes are mostly protons.
Those are captured by the Earth's magnetic field; they spiral around the field's lines of force, then into the upper polar atmospheres.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 18 2019, @03:54PM (3 children)
You're absolutely right. It's too bad that there's no such thing as insulation or artificial lights to compensate for the fierce diurnal cycle on the moon. Nor any convenient rock to use as radiation shielding. Nor massive amounts of available oxygen (with sufficient energy for chemical synthesis - the Moon is estimated to be 60% oxygen by mass). Nor massive amounts of silicon to make solar panels (most of that oxygen is bound into silicon dioxide).
Basically, barring the extremely light elements, the moon has pretty much the same mix of resources as the Earth, though some
Water will be a legitimate issue in the long term, as the moon appears to lack significant hydrogen reserves. Fortunately sufficient short-term water ice deposits seem to be present, and hydrogen is extremely light - every 1kg of hydrogen will produce 9kg of water. And we're getting better at producing closed-system ecologies - while the moon would finally give us a decent short-term reason to start investing seriously in that research.
Dust will also be an issue - though that will be a problem pretty much anywhere in space, and it's probably easier to learn to deal with dust that's only mechanically toxic rather than chemically as well.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday January 18 2019, @05:47PM (2 children)
while the moon would finally give us a decent short-term reason to start investing seriously in that research.
Over the next few decades we'll have to do that anyway to survive the effects of climate change. No matter how much we screw up Earth though, it will be easier to live on Earth than the moon. About the only thing that would cause problems on Earth enough to make the Moon (or even Mars) easier is a very large asteroid or supervolcano, especially if combined with Kessler syndrome to limit access to space.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 18 2019, @06:32PM
Oh, we probably have more than a few decades before we start seriously building eco-domes on Earth - though we'll probably start wishing we had them. If we wait to develop the technology until we need it on Earth, then we're faced with developing large-scale infrastructure from alpha-stage technology. Having an immediate and extreme small-scale need for such technology gives it a chance to develop and mature before we need to start deploying it on a large scale.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @06:33PM
Doomsday culters or flat earthers, who is wackier?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday January 18 2019, @08:05PM
1 thermal insulation can can be delt with by burying the base under a few feet of dirt
2 dirt and water make a better radiation shield than you think
3, good air filters and proper post moonwalk cleaning procedures can handle that.
4, there is actually a LOT of Oxygen on the Moon. It is tied up with various metals in the Lunar soil/rock, all you need is Hydrogen and energy to free it. And there is actually a fair amount of water on the Moon [space.com], think about how much more is probably underground.
5 there is plenty of available energy sources on the Moon, apart from solar energy in the day (no clouds!) there is also a surprising amount of easy to get Thorium [wikipedia.org] to power/heat your base/colony during the night.
6 that is true in any first settlement in a new land. You bring/ship in what you need until you are self sufficient. So far none of the moon missions were "lets build a permanent settlement" type of missions.
Pointing at the lack of self sustaining bases in Antartica is a red hearing, there hasn't been any attempt to make the outposts self sustaining.
If the effort was made there could be a fully self sustaining colony on the Moon within a decade, two at the most. It wouldn't be luxurious but it would be independent.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday January 18 2019, @10:00PM
"Expire-ment"? Well played, Sir! Well played. Please do not tell us this a mundane typo.
(Score: 1) by LAV8.ORg on Friday January 18 2019, @11:37PM
A pipe dream gave us indoor plumbing; overwhelming complexity alone is not sufficient to preclude development of what would be profoundly beneficial.
Seamless extraEarth colonization will take countless generations, but failure to evolve beyond Earth will take all of them, and that quantity is provably lesser (inclusive).