Giant Leaf For Mankind? China Germinates First Seed on Moon (theguardian.com) 145
A small green shoot is growing on the moon after a cotton seed germinated onboard a Chinese lunar lander, scientists said. From a report: The sprout has emerged from a lattice-like structure inside a canister after the Chang'e 4 lander touched down earlier this month, according to a series of photos released by the Advanced Technology Research Institute at Chongqing University. "This is the first time humans have done biological growth experiments on the lunar surface," said Xie Gengxin, who led the design of the experiment, on Tuesday. Plants have been grown previously on the International Space Station, but this is the first time a seed has sprouted on the moon. The ability to grow plants in space is seen as crucial for long-term space missions and establishing human outposts elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars.
And so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chia Pet (Score:2)
Chia seeds will grow on terracotta pottery and water.
Earth soil (Score:5, Informative)
It appears it's Earth soil. I found nothing in the article to suggest it's using lunar soil here, which would be the real test. The article should have pointed that out; it's not a trivial admission.
Re:Earth soil (Score:4, Funny)
"Fake moon soil, totally rigged, believe me! I told you Jiiina cheats, knew they would! Loser probe snuck cheating soil past Earth barrier. Need better barriers to keep out bad hombre probes, Earth is not sending their best. Make moon farmers pay for Space Wall, and Space Force must fix this! #MakeSoilGreatAgain!"
- Orangebot AI test
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Re:Earth soil (Score:4, Interesting)
Could plants even grow in lunar soil? Not without something extra mixed in I would imagine. No nutrients, no moisture, no bacteria or animal life.
Re:Earth soil (Score:4, Insightful)
Also no erosion, which leads to very pointy, sharp edged regolith. Not too comfortable for roots.
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Re:Earth soil (Score:4, Funny)
Adding astronaut feces would be a good test. It's what colonists would probably have to rely on.
I'd hate to be the person at NASA in charge of creating the poop experiment, though.
"Dad, what do you do at work?"
"Why, I prepare important poop for important rockets, Mikey."
"Dad, is my poop important?..."
(I avoided a Uranus joke; that alone should get me mod points.)
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Adding astronaut feces would be a good test. It's what colonists would probably have to rely on.
You mean:
It's what colonists would probably have to rely on.
colon-ists
Re:Earth soil (Score:5, Informative)
This experiment has been performed with Lunar Soil Simulant (JSC-1) here on earth. Plants were able to grew, poorly, in it directly. Adding organic matter and fertilizer improved growth significantly as expected.
https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
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Fascinating read, thank you. I'm very surprised at the result.
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The most surprising result from that is how the Martian soil did better than Earth soil.
I think the researchers probably could've been a bit more careful in their choice of Earth soil. Clearly we have much better soil, such as potting soil, that should have outperformed the Martian soil simulant and would have made a more interesting comparison. After all, the alternative to using Martian soil is not average Earth soil, but the best kind of soil we can make.
A comparison with hydroponics or aeroponics would
Re: Earth soil (Score:2)
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It appears it's Earth soil. I found nothing in the article to suggest it's using lunar soil here, which would be the real test. The article should have pointed that out; it's not a trivial admission.
Obviously not, because robots don't poop.
In a human station there would be fertilizer available.
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Much of China's industry is highly capitalistic. I'm not defending communism here at all, but to say alleged intellectual property theft or "copying" is caused by their "communism" is silly.
By the way, many who have lived in China recently say they have some of the best smart-phone apps there are. Many there rely purely on their phone for just about every Internet service and financial transaction. PC's never really caught on there as a c
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A semi-caveat is some believe their gov't assists with industrial espionage. Even if true, that's not inherently a "communist" function. US gov't does similar for military technology, handing off discovered secrets to military contractors. Does that make us more "commie"?
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Theft of I.P is not, "capitalism".
It's theft.
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Information wants to be free.
Meh. Don't anthropomorphize information. It hates that.
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> In the US you have the people who contribute nothing but carbon dioxide to the country while expecting handouts on the premise that they "deserve" to take a piece of what others have earned.
Every western nation with strong social programs have over all better quality of life for their citizens than the US. You're a fucking idiot.
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I've been to some of those countries. You're the fucking idiot.
Simple truth, communism means environmental fail (Score:2)
I've been to ALL of those countries. YOU are the idiot, the poster is exactly right - the more authoritarian a country is, the worse the environment will be, in all sorts of ways (including just overall litter, never mind worse pollution).
East and West Germany was the best example of this profound and endlessly repeated truth - Venezuela being the most recent example of how Communism can turn even the most beautiful verdant land into a swirling cesspit of pollution and filth.
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Doesn't sound so great actually. It would be more amazing if they learned to wean themselves off of the smart phones.
Re: NOthing Since Gun powder (Score:2)
Re:And so? (Score:5, Informative)
There is the 672 hour lunar day and night which could be an issue for plant growth, the the technology to make a bubble that can support prolong life in a hostile environment like the moon.
Re:And so? (Score:4, Funny)
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Why would you assume a 672 hour day/night cycle is difficult for plants? I mean, you are aware that plants grow in that area where you're near enough to the poles to have constant day and night but far enough as to not have permafrost. I've heard northern Alaska does very well growing things.
Re:And so? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And so? (Score:4, Funny)
Well it least it gave us a punderful headline.
If you like that pun, just wait for the eventual follow-up when they harvest the cotton and announce "Chinese Make One Giant Reap For Mankind!"
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Re:And so? (Score:5, Insightful)
After the sprouting comes growth. No one has ever raised a plant in a gravity field of 1/6 G. Never. Schemes to simulate it on Earth do not really do that, and while a centrifuge in orbit can do a proper simulation, no one has ever operated such a centrifuge over a plants life cycle.
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Re:And so? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are trying to create a completely self contained environment in which plants and fruit flies can live, and observe the effects of low gravity on them.
Sure, we assumed it would be fine, but it's a good idea to prove that assumption before sending tonnes of soil and plants up there with a view to sustaining human life. It's also a useful test of the sealed environment idea and technology, in an environment subject to extreme temperature swings.
Much of that tech will be applicable to Mars too.
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We already know that "it would be fine" is not true due to the biodome experiments. Trees and other freestanding plants sort of disintegrated and fell over. Without wind stressing and breaking fibers, the plants did not have enough strength to become rigid. It's like having an animal spend their entire life in a state of stupor with no muscle strain or growth.
The two relevant stressors are wind and gravity. Without both, freestanding plants like cotton fail to thrive.
We all know how much you hate western ev
All wrong (Score:2)
I was going to correct you, but honestly since every single point you list is wrong, I figure I would just let people Google your individual points to laugh at you rather than spend all that effort myself.
On a larger meta level, there is a pretty damn huge advantage in having large numbers of people living off planet, some further physically removed than even just the moon or orbit...
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While I agree that his points are wrong (and somewhat bizarre), the "damn huge advantage" is something you're going to have to explain.
I've heard people explain that it's a hedge against an Earth extinction event. But I see it as a doubling* of the odds of a planetary extinction event for humans. The sadness of human death is proportional to the number of humans that died, not the number of survivors.
So I don't accept that one. If there were an economic or social reason why it's useful to have it, that's
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I'll take a stab at the damn huge advantage bit.
If I need a pile of rocks moved from point A to point B here on Earth I'm going to call a guy who will drive his diesel powered bulldozer onto the back of his diesel powered truck, drive over asphalt and concrete and highways, unload into my front yard, and sit in the seat moving the levers on the bulldozer to move the rocks.
That process is so cheap here on Earth that there isn't enough cost, real cost and opportunity cost, to get people to invest in researchi
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Lack of any atmosphere, perhaps?
Oh, and is it just me, or did this article headline remind anyone of the series 1 premiere of The Orville?
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It is in an enclosed artificial environment that replicates growing conditions on Earth sufficiently to germinate elsewhere.
Please explain how that environment replicates 1g in that 1/6g environment.
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It proves that, as of today, there is life on one other rock in this Universe. It's not sustainable life and it didn't evolve independently, but it's life on something other than Earth.
As to who suggested what, that is irrelevant. Until a thing is experimentally demonstrated there is always the chance that it might not be possible. If you can't see how awesome this is then I can't help you.
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Before Neil Armstrong, did anyone ever suggest or was there any reason to believe that a man could not take a step on the moon?
Doing something first on the moon is newsworthy. It's also an essential verification step before creating a moon base, and that's China's stated purpose.
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When you plan to colonize space, you have to test all aspects, step-by-step. Imagine if the experiment was trying to grow plants on the lunar surface. The test fails. What would that prove? First, you have to eliminate the possibility that it's impossible to grow stuff on the moon even if given the best conditions possible.
When people here troubleshoot problems and debug code, do you all jump to the extreme case and test nothing else? Or do you test to
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Whatever the case may be, you'd still want to test whether we can grow something on the moon without it having to be in the actual lunar soil. If we can't even make anything grow in the most friendly conditions in that environment, then we have no hope of anything else.
Failing at growing something in the lunar soil will help nothing if we can't grow something at all.
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Maybe the research is with low gravity. In the ISS they grew some plants with zero gravity, similar but not really the same thing. Probably a sure thing that it will grow, but what's unknown is how well it grows, does germination work the same way, etc.
But don't worry, they didn't go to the moon just to do this one experiment.
Surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm surprised that a scientific endeavor would allow for the potential of contaminating the surface with live biological samples.
Regardless if there ever were anything on the moon, this makes studying that harder by its very existence.
Also, we've already done zero-g growth experiments, what value did this add? It's not like the lander sourced soil and water for this.
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It's in a sealed container.
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I'm surprised that a scientific endeavor would allow for the potential of contaminating the surface with live biological samples.
Regardless if there ever were anything on the moon, this makes studying that harder by its very existence.
Also, we've already done zero-g growth experiments, what value did this add? It's not like the lander sourced soil and water for this.
It's inside the lander, in earth soil. Sealed.
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I'm surprised that a scientific endeavor would allow for the potential of contaminating the surface with live biological samples.
So what? If it somehow grows into a cotten based Kaiju, it will just die on the moon. If it escapes the lander and magically makes the moon green and blue, all the better. At some point in the scientific process, you have to say "Let's roll!" and do the thing instead of worrying about contamination. We know the moon is hostile to terrestrial life. Adding terrestrial life won't hurt none, yo.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It's all in a sealed environment. The idea is to create a viable, self-contained environment with some plants and fruit flies.
In any case, that boat has probably already sailed as it seems that at least one of the Surveyor probes was contaminated. And you also have to ask if it's worth worrying about, given that we are fairly certain that the Moon is dead and not having to deal with it will make life a lot easier to establish a presence there.
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Zero-G growth experiments are not 1/6-G growth experiments. This has never been done before.
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Which would be great, if only the Chinese had access to the International Space Station.
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I'm surprised that a scientific endeavor would allow for the potential of contaminating the surface with live biological samples.
Regardless if there ever were anything on the moon, this makes studying that harder by its very existence.
Also, we've already done zero-g growth experiments, what value did this add? It's not like the lander sourced soil and water for this.
Not sure if there is a need for scientific qualms here, but if there is, China isn't going to have any. This is China we are talking about.
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The US had quite a few biological samples roaming around up there, and even driving a rover around.
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Re:Thanks for Contaminating the Moon (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, China, for destroying lunar science by ...
- Moon is lifeless, there is no need to worry about contamination (it's not Mars) - really
- the seeds are in a sealed container, even if breached it will be sterilized by the solar radiation
- germinating seeds is an important experiment for potential human settlements on the Moon - shoulv'e been done long time ago
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"- Moon is lifeless"
That's what they said about Ceti Alpha V, and look where that got Captain Terrell..
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This is a middle school philosophy based argument. The moon has vacuum and radiation that will sterilize all. It has no 'ecology'.
So bloody what? (Score:1)
Re:So bloody what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you looked at the US Space Program? I don't mean looking at our historic achievements, I mean looking at where we are today. While we were celebrating our wins, we allowed our Aerospace Industry to drive the cost of space so high that it strangled our ability to explore. Here's a news flash; Apollo 11's landing was 49.5 years ago. Most people who saw the it are retired or getting ready to retire.
It's worse. Most NASA badges are currently drawing unemployment, and the few that are showing up to work aren't getting paid. We haven't had manned spaceflight capability in almost a decade, and the only reason we're on the ISS is because the Russians choose to let us ride along. With the current electile dysfunction there is a good chance we miss the window for the 2020 rover launch too.
There are times for swinging your "My country is better than yours!" stick around; this isn't one.
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NASA in 2013 had planned to launch pretty much this same exact experiment by 2015: http://blogs.discovermagazine.... [discovermagazine.com]
NASA's version was far more of a publicity stunt, since it was all about involving kids in classrooms around the country. But apparently NASA didn't accomplish the mission. China did. Good for China.
No, a SMALL leaf (Score:2)
Both the article and the summary agree, the plant is still a small shoot, so no giant leaves for mankind. Sorry, just a few very small ones!
Didn't they land on the dark side of the moon? (Score:1)
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