Growing Plants on the Moon May Be Feasible

Smivs writes "European scientists say that growing plants on the moon should be possible. Scientists in the Netherlands believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions. It would also aid in understanding the challenges that might be faced by manned bases. 'The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth. A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface. In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.'"

Huh?

[powerlinekid (442532)]

sister satellite

I don't think that means what the article writer intended it to mean...

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

No, no, you misunderstand. The article writer is from 3753 Cruithne.

Re:

[Missing_dc (1074809)]

Doesn't matter, I'm still stuck on the smart russian chicks who headed this research. I can only hope they are hot... mmmmm lets see... Skolka anna stoyet?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

try asking 10 people on the street which language is spoken in Great Britain!

Which 10? English, Welsh, Irish, Ulster Scots, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, or Cornish...

Re:Huh?

[kobatan (1103577)]

Northern Ireland is part of the UK but not Great Britain. The Republic of Ireland is in neither the UK or GB.

Side note: these days Polish is a pretty common first language in the UK.

Re:Huh?

[pclminion (145572)]

I don't object to "satellite," I object to "sister."

I can't find a single way of looking at things that would place Earth and Moon in a sibling relationship in any reasonable hierarchy. The Moon orbits the Earth -- no matter how you slice it it's not our "sister."

Pointing out that in some sense the Earth also orbits the Moon (around a center of gravity which is physically inside the Earth) doesn't really help, because you could use the same argument to say that the Sun is orbiting the Earth, and that would make the Sun our sister as well, which of course due to the transitive nature of siblinghood, would logically make the Moon a "sister" of the Sun, which is even more ridiculous a notion.

So uh, yeah.

Re:Huh?

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

-- no matter how you slice it it's not our "sister."

It's earth's twin sister alright, if it was created by an asteroid impacting Earth. Just imagine they were siamese sisters and the asteroid was the scalpel :)

Re:Huh?

[DAtkins (768457)]

Technically, it wasn't an asteroid, but the protoplanet Theia [wikipedia.org]. I'm splitting hairs, but this is Slashdot :)

Re:Huh?

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

Well, we were waiting until she was older before telling, but she's actually an adopted sister.

Very careful--only one chance

[crow (16139)]

We may only get one chance to do this right. If we introduce a bacteria that can survive without artificial shelter (doubtful, but possible), it's there forever. Many of the problems we've had here with invasive species has been due to things introduced intentionally that ended up doing things that weren't anticipated.

Granted, the moon is a harsh enough environment that anything we do will probably only be in a pressurized man-made structure, but that might not be the case if we try it on Mars.

Re:Very careful--only one chance

[JK_the_Slacker (1175625)]

Did you just say that the moon is a harsh mistress?

Re:Very careful--only one chance

[jollyreaper (513215)]

We may only get one chance to do this right. If we introduce a bacteria that can survive without artificial shelter (doubtful, but possible), it's there forever. Many of the problems we've had here with invasive species has been due to things introduced intentionally that ended up doing things that weren't anticipated.

Holy shit, you're right! Just think of the impact an escaped bacterium could have on the lunar ecology.

Re:

[crow (16139)]

Yup, they have no enemies except the environment. Whatever they do to extract nutrients would eventually be done to the entire moon if they got out. If we find a need for the material in its current form, we'll be too late. If we find that the conversion process has side effects that we didn't anticipate (like, say, breaking apart all the rocks into dust), we would be hosed.

Re:Very careful--only one chance

[fredrikj (629833)]

Unless the bacteria eat gravity.

No decayed organic matter = no soil

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

Why wouldn't they try a plant that grows in extremely low nutrient soil? There are plenty of plants that grow in sand along beaches and generate their own food through photosynthesis (all plants do, but some rely on it more than others).

Garden flowers are probably the worst type of plant to try to grow in nutrient-free dirt.

Sunlight is the Biggie

[StCredZero (169093)]

Sunlight is the biggest problem. Most places on the Moon go through two weeks of darkness, and providing sunlight-equivalent illumination would be energy prohibitive. Soviet scientists have experimented with keeping plants on low artificial light at low temperatures for two weeks, alternating that with two weeks of light. Apparently, peas can grow like this.

Give peas a chance...

[by Anonymous Coward]

...that's all I'm saying...

Marigolds

[boristdog (133725)]

Of COURSE they used marigolds.

Now they need to study the effect of gamma rays on these plants.

The next Cheech and Chong movie...

[Anne_Nonymous (313852)]

Cheech: "Sounds like the perfect place to grow some reefer, man."

Chong: "Like wow man, the pigs would never think to look on the moon, man."

I can see it now... Kudzu!

[zenaida_valdez (599247)]

It'll grow anywhere. It don't need no stinkin' air. The Moon will be completely covered in 3 to 5 years.

Similar but Different: Grow them in Space?

[LionKimbro (200000)]

I always like to point to this article: Terraforming: Human Destiny or Hubris [space.com]

It argues Konstantin Tsiolkovsky [wikipedia.org]'s vision: that we should learn how to grow plants in Space first, and stay the hell away from all gravity sinks (such as moons, such as planets,) for a very long time.

That said, if we can grow plants on the moon, that's great!

(older article) [physorg.com]

Repeat these experiments at home

[the_kanzure (1100087)]

I drew up some plans to make what I call a "moontank" [heybryan.org]. At the moment, the design is for cyanobacteria, however adding plants would be an interesting modification. The idea is to use a vacuum chamber here on earth and to make up something that looks like the same environment as found on the moon. Sprinkle in some bacteria, do some directed selection experiments, and see what we can get out of it.

He he ...

[gstoddart (321705)]

Scientists in the Netherlands, believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions.

*laugh* Oh, those wacky Dutch. Trying to start a grow-op on the moon.

I for one welcome our new lunar based, wooden shod, pot growing overlords, and anticipate the weed that is truly out of this world.

I think that's a good sign for lunar exploration -- brothels and legalized drugs will make space attractive for much more of the population. :-P

Cheers

Re:

[calebt3 (1098475)]

Why? If they could get CO2 from the soil, it could work.

Re:Air?

[vtscott (1089271)]

If it doesn't cause humans [wikipedia.org] to explode, why would it cause plants to explode? From the link...

Humans and animals exposed to vacuum will lose consciousness after a few seconds and die of hypoxia within minutes, but the symptoms are not nearly as graphic as commonly shown in pop culture.

Re:

[Nullav (1053766)]

Not to mention that plants also have cell walls, making them more resistant to...popping than animals are.

Re:

[Oxy the moron (770724)]

I was of the understanding that plants (at least those that photosynthesize) only need water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. Oxygen, I think, is a product of photosynthesis, not an input.

Not that there is an abundance of H2O and CO2 on the moon, though... at least... I'm not aware of there being one.

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

> Oxygen, I think, is a product of photosynthesis, not an input

Yes, but majority of the plants don't produce sugar/starch just for fun. They also use it to grow. And for that, they need oxygen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiration [wikipedia.org]

Water on Moon has not yet been proven, but it is still possible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_ice [wikipedia.org]

I don't see the lack of CO2 as a problem. Let's just place a few humans there to produce CO2. Or if that is not acceptable, perhaps animals.

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

Don't plants need some form of air to survive? Not just rocks and bacteria? Don't see this working out.

In his trilogy beginning with Red Mars [amazon.com] , Kim Stanley Robinson points out one of the difficulties of growing anything in a terraformed environment is the poverty of the soil. Even if you've got the right kind of rock, seeding it things such as earthworms (which are apparently vital to good crop growth) is so difficult that such soil can only be manufactured at incredibly slow speeds. It's not just air,

Re:Air?

[jellomizer (103300)]

Hmmm. Planting earthworms on the Moon... Moon Worms... After countless years, they will evolve better resistance to low pressure to a point where it can survive in a vaccume, resistant to full radiation from the sun, and collect all the materials it needs O2 and Water from the ground. Flurisning in this environment it will soon learn to use some of the excess gasses it digegest as a form or propulation, grow larger and larger until it reaches huge sizes where in order for them to survive they must eat moons and planets and fly to other systems in hibernation. To feed on other solar systems... Man you guys just doomed the galixy.

Re:Air?

[Frigid Monkey (411257)]

So I guess that moon weed is some good stuff huh?

Re:Air?

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

"I have ridden the mighty moon worm!"
                                      -- Al Gore, Inventor of the Environment, First Emperor of the Moon

Re:Air?

[dpilot (134227)]

Predating "Red Mars" (and even predating "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") by a few years, Robert Heinlein wrote "Farmer in the Sky". In it he went into goodly detail about what it would take to turn bare rock into fertile soil, including earthworms and composting all of your biological waste. He had the Ganymede colony under a dome, though it was at reduced pressure.

A friend who had also read "Farmer..." said that he'd been to Hawaii and seen their process of recovering lava fields to soil, and felt that Heinlein was right in the same ballpark, and least with the rock-crushing side of things. Obviously in a place like Hawaii it would be harder to keep life out than to start it up.

Re:Air?

[hey! (33014)]

One interesting fact about earthworms -- they are an exotic invasive species in North America. In fact, if you ever use worms as bait, you should never just toss them away except where you got them.

When the North American ice sheet receded, there weren't any earthworm species in most of the continent. Nature found its own equilibrium without them, with its own unique set of preferred tree and understory species. Europeans reintroduced the earthworm, and it is gradually erasing some of the distinctiveness of North American forest from European forests.

There is no question that earthworms are beneficial in most gardens and compost heaps, and might be useful in some kind of extraterrestrial gardening experiment. Then again, they might not, depending on the design of the garden.

Re:Air?

[ubuwalker31 (1009137)]

Not entirely correct: Only 33% of the earthworm species in North America are exotic/introduced. Only two genera of Lumbricid earthworms are indigenous to North America while introduced genera have spread to areas where earthworms did not formerly exist, especially in the north where forest development relies on a large amount of undecayed leaf matter. (From wikipedia)

Re:

[Thelasko (1196535)]

I'm assuming the plants would be grown inside a pressurized building. The great breakthrough with this study is that the soil in the building would not have to be brought all the way from earth. The amount of soil would be heavy and require massive amounts of fuel to get it there. The results of this experiment suggest that we would only have to bring bacteria, air, and water.

Re:Air?

[vtscott (1089271)]

Just like you, plants require oxygen from the air to metabolize their food (in their case the sugars they produce from photosynthesis). If they had no oxygen, they couldn't perform plant respiration. [wikipedia.org] Plants don't store oxygen from photosynthesis internally so they rely on being able to pull oxygen from the air when they need it. Of course, overall plants produce more oxygen through photosynthesis than they use through respiration, so if we put these moon plants in some kind of dome they'd not die from lack of oxygen.

Re:Air?

[dvice_null (981029)]

Well, actually majority of the plants need also oxygen, but there are some plants which don't need it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant#Growth [wikipedia.org]

Re:Air?

[hey! (33014)]

In other words, they can build a big terrarium.

Here's something to consider. If you have ever maintained an aquarium, you probably know that despite what common sense would tell you, the larger the aquarium is, the easier it is to keep going. True, things like water changes become logistically harder as the tank sizes get to the enormous ranges, but you build around that.

The tricky thing about small aquariums is that the chemistry can change rapidly in a small volume of water. You've got to watch a 5 gallon tank like a hawk for things like spikes in ammonia or shifts in pH. A 50 gallon tank is quite easy for a beginner to maintain, apart from having to lug buckets of water around. If you heater goes out, or worse if it get stuck on, you're fish are dead if you don't notice it right away. In a fifty gallon tank you've got some slack.

The logical end goal of growing plants on the Moon would be to set up a system in which the plants, given a carefully controlled start, establish an environment that achieves equilibrium without putting more resources into it. Naturally, the larger the environment is, the easier it would be to do this. Once you have established how much space you need to reach a moderately stable equilibrium, let's say it's a thousand cubic meters, you can build larger examples that actually resist moving away from their equilibrium point.

The thing about systems in equilibrium, as any chemical engineer will tell you, is that when you take something that is part of the equilibrium out, they respond by making more of it.

Which is just what you need to have an efficient, self sustaining environment on the Moon. Or the Earth, for that matter.

Re:and of course...

[hansraj (458504)]

But that would involve *going* to the moon which anyone with a brain knows is impossible.

Re:and of course...

[hansraj (458504)]

So you are one of those nutcases that don't believe that we actually landed on moon? Only people with severe psychological disorders believe that crap.

Wait.. why do you have my nick?

Re:terraforming recapitulates phylogeny?

[caffeinemessiah (918089)]

Scientists in the Netherlands, believe growing plants on ou...

Look, if anyone knows anything about growing plants under unfavorable conditions (soil if not legal), it would be the Dutch. Looking forward to new strains like "Even More Northern Lights", "Earthly Glow", ...

had to be said too.

Two words

[by Anonymous Coward]

Moon Weed!

Re:wishful thinking

[xtracto (837672)]

You do know that people have been growing plants in mineral solutions [wikipedia.org] for years don't you?

You will only need a source of Co2 which could be delivered from the earth and use a sealed glasshouse (greenhouse) to conserve the ecosystem.

After you have got "enough" oxygen from the plants you can then send some lambs and rabbits to produce more Co2 for the plants.

Re:wishful thinking

[CogDissident (951207)]

Actually, you're wrong on every account.

1: The dirt "does" have enough nutrients for some variety of plants.
2: Present under a pressure dome, that the plants would have to have anyway.
3 and 4: Are satisfied by having non-acidic, non alkaline, neutral soil PH, which exists on the moon.
5: Topic of the article.
6: Water "is" speculated to be buried in pockets on the moon.
7 and 8: Both present under a pressure dome.

Growing plants on the moon, just as hard as putting up a pressure dome that people living there would need to be under anyway.

*insert annoying self-signing at the end of a post that already has my name on it at the top anyway*

Just naysay everything without understanding it

[spun (1352)]

I love this kind of argument because it is so easy to debunk. A self sustaining moon colony would be worth the money it takes to set up, from a scientific and economic standpoint. This just makes it cheaper to do.

Consider that there are no pests on the moon. There is nothing but open space and free sunlight. The moon has a tiny gravity well. Think about bio-fuel production on Earth, and all the problems that go along with it. None of those problems exist on the moon.

If you can't see any of the reasons to have a moon colony in the first place, you are too stupid to try to explain this too.

Re:

[jd (1658)]

The first is answered by the article and 2-6 were largely answered by Biosphere 2, so those don't seem to apply. The problem is not one-off transports, but repeat trasports. That just leaves cosmic radiation and constant temperature. These are not trivial problems. Cosmic radiation might not be too bad - the seeds that the Apollo astronauts took to the moon and brought back remained viable, and many living organisms have survived shuttle and space station missions for prolonged periods of time. You'd want s

Re:

[Thelasko (1196535)]

Not only that, Hydroponics also makes the whole experiment pointless.

Re:Little shop of horrors !

[CogDissident (951207)]

I'm too much of a nerd, immediately thinking that "Hey, human flesh doesn't actually have enough nutrients in it that plants need in their current form. They'd have to kill us, then plant themselves in us and get the nutrients from us as we decompose"

Re:

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

Brings new meaning to 'astroterf'.