Growing food in Mars
PostPosted:Thu Aug 09, 2012 12:23 am
Saw some article about how people are working on how to have a greenhouse on Mars to grow plants because transporting packaged food to Mars is expensive and that people might get depressed eating packaged food for five years. So far the furthest progress is that they were able to grow a piece of lettuce on the ISS.
Now I'm sure this stuff is sound in theory but it seems like if this is at all possible you could start getting these greenhouse in anywhere on Earth where we can't grow food, and it's got to be easier to grow food in literally anywhere on Earth than anywhere on Mars. Yes this technology could be expensive and whatnot but it presumably doesn't need much in terms of maintenance (anything's designed to work on Mars has to be reasonably self-sustaining because you sure won't have a lot of supplies to fix it) and I'm sure people living in the desert would appreciate having one of these things.
This is an example where I think people always misuse the stuff that space technology can be used elsewhere. Yes if you have some kind of self sustaining green house it'd help here on Earth, but that's backwards. If you can have a self sustaining greenhouse we'd be using it right now and it'd just be common sense to bring one of those with you when you go to Mars. There's more than enough motivation to come up with something even at a slight loss that allows you to grow food anywhere given there's plenty of worry about running of arable land and whatnot. So if this technology is close to being complete someone would already be working on it, and whether it's useful when you go to Mars or not isn't going to be a factor in whether this technology gets invested in.
Now I'm sure this stuff is sound in theory but it seems like if this is at all possible you could start getting these greenhouse in anywhere on Earth where we can't grow food, and it's got to be easier to grow food in literally anywhere on Earth than anywhere on Mars. Yes this technology could be expensive and whatnot but it presumably doesn't need much in terms of maintenance (anything's designed to work on Mars has to be reasonably self-sustaining because you sure won't have a lot of supplies to fix it) and I'm sure people living in the desert would appreciate having one of these things.
This is an example where I think people always misuse the stuff that space technology can be used elsewhere. Yes if you have some kind of self sustaining green house it'd help here on Earth, but that's backwards. If you can have a self sustaining greenhouse we'd be using it right now and it'd just be common sense to bring one of those with you when you go to Mars. There's more than enough motivation to come up with something even at a slight loss that allows you to grow food anywhere given there's plenty of worry about running of arable land and whatnot. So if this technology is close to being complete someone would already be working on it, and whether it's useful when you go to Mars or not isn't going to be a factor in whether this technology gets invested in.