SpaceX Launches Tomato Seeds, Other Supplies to Space Station (cnn.com) 28
About an hour ago SpaceX began tweeting video highlights of their latest launch — a NASA-commissioned resupply mission for the International Space Station.
- "Liftoff!"
- "Falcon 9's first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship"
- "Dragon separation confirmed; autonomous docking to the Space Station on Sunday, November 27 at ~7:30 a.m. ET"
You can watch the whole launch on SpaceX's web site. But CNN explains that SpaceX "has launched more than two dozen resupply missions to the space station over the past decade as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with NASA. This launch comes amid SpaceX's busiest year to date, with more than 50 operations so far, including two astronaut missions."
And yet this one carries something unique. (And it's not just the Thanksgiving-themed treats and solar arrays to boost the space station's power...) Nutrients are a key component of maintaining good health in space. But fresh produce is in short supply on the space station compared with the prepackaged meals astronauts eat during their six-month stays in low-Earth orbit. "It is fairly important to our exploration goals at NASA to be able to sustain the crew with not only nutrition but also to look at various types of plants as sources for nutrients that we would be hard-pressed to sustain on the long trips between distant destinations like Mars and so forth," said Kirt Costello, chief scientist at NASA's International Space Station Program and a deputy manager of the ISS Research Integration Office.
Astronauts have grown and tasted different types of lettuce, radishes and chiles on the International Space Station. Now, the crew members can add some dwarf tomatoes — specifically, Red Robin tomatoes — to their list of space-grown salad ingredients. The experiment is part of an effort to provide continuous fresh food production in space.... The space tomatoes will be grown inside small bags called plant pillows installed in the Vegetable Production System, known as the Veggie growth chamber, on the space station. The astronauts will frequently water and nurture the plants....
The hardware is still in development for larger crop production on the space station and eventually other planets, but scientists are already planning what plants might grow best on the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, a team successfully grew plants in lunar soil that included samples collected during the Apollo missions. "Tomatoes are going to be a great crop for the moon," Massa said. "They're very nutritious, very delicious, and we think the astronauts will be really excited to grow them there."
- "Liftoff!"
- "Falcon 9's first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship"
- "Dragon separation confirmed; autonomous docking to the Space Station on Sunday, November 27 at ~7:30 a.m. ET"
You can watch the whole launch on SpaceX's web site. But CNN explains that SpaceX "has launched more than two dozen resupply missions to the space station over the past decade as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with NASA. This launch comes amid SpaceX's busiest year to date, with more than 50 operations so far, including two astronaut missions."
And yet this one carries something unique. (And it's not just the Thanksgiving-themed treats and solar arrays to boost the space station's power...) Nutrients are a key component of maintaining good health in space. But fresh produce is in short supply on the space station compared with the prepackaged meals astronauts eat during their six-month stays in low-Earth orbit. "It is fairly important to our exploration goals at NASA to be able to sustain the crew with not only nutrition but also to look at various types of plants as sources for nutrients that we would be hard-pressed to sustain on the long trips between distant destinations like Mars and so forth," said Kirt Costello, chief scientist at NASA's International Space Station Program and a deputy manager of the ISS Research Integration Office.
Astronauts have grown and tasted different types of lettuce, radishes and chiles on the International Space Station. Now, the crew members can add some dwarf tomatoes — specifically, Red Robin tomatoes — to their list of space-grown salad ingredients. The experiment is part of an effort to provide continuous fresh food production in space.... The space tomatoes will be grown inside small bags called plant pillows installed in the Vegetable Production System, known as the Veggie growth chamber, on the space station. The astronauts will frequently water and nurture the plants....
The hardware is still in development for larger crop production on the space station and eventually other planets, but scientists are already planning what plants might grow best on the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, a team successfully grew plants in lunar soil that included samples collected during the Apollo missions. "Tomatoes are going to be a great crop for the moon," Massa said. "They're very nutritious, very delicious, and we think the astronauts will be really excited to grow them there."
Surprised tomatoes were not tried before (Score:2)
Interesting summary, one thing that I found surprising was in the list of veggies they already grow in space, tomatoes were not among them - there are so many varieties it seems very likely you can find one that will do well growing in space, and generally tomatoes are more flavorful than the other things they listed.
Re: Surprised tomatoes were not tried before (Score:2)
tomatoes are fruits though!
seems meat is the answer for long space trips, jerky for the win!
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That's because everyone keeps forgetting to yell "boo!" before launch.
What happened to the 26 StarShip launches in 22? (Score:1, Offtopic)
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/3... [cnbc.com]
So, what became of this?
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Things have emerged recently claiming that SpaceX had a layer of middle-management specifically for handling Musk. More specifically, he's a source of money and publicity, but needs careful steering so that the company can stay on-track. By this account, it's really that he's managed to get a good group of people together and fund them, rather than that he's the smartest man on Earth. He's certainly not making a good impression on Twitter, nor did he for the cave rescue or pretty much any other time when
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I'll just add that such claims may be hearsay, I'd be curious to learn about more substantiated information
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Well keep in mind that I did put out the hearsay note, and thank you for your response.
I won't comment on internal operations at any of these places, and perhaps only the bad things he's putting out on Twitter are the ones getting the publicity. But as I see it he's giving a megaphone back to some bad people, and that I don't like. It's not just those bad people, it's the many who follow them.
Programming needs (Score:2)
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Things have emerged recently claiming that SpaceX had a layer of middle-management specifically for handling Musk. More specifically, he's a source of money and publicity, but needs careful steering so that the company can stay on-track. By this account, it's really that he's managed to get a good group of people together and fund them, rather than that he's the smartest man on Earth. He's certainly not making a good impression on Twitter, nor did he for the cave rescue or pretty much any other time when he hasn't stuck strictly to cars or rocketry. (Jury is still out on cars, too.)
Huh? Jury is still out on cars? Even if Tesla were to disappear tomorrow, he's *already* the guy who already managed to transform EVs from dorkmobiles that can drive 5 km at a jogger's pace and then need to charge overnight, to a viable transport solution, with infrastructure, and even desirable as status symbol.
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He certainly is the guy who transformed the image of the electric car.
When I say that the jury is out, it's on the whole self-driving thing. He has a certain brashness (If you're not failing you're not moving fast enough.) that has certainly worked wonders for SpaceX, and so far that has held into their manned space work as well. The failures in Tesla self-driving have certainly been extensively reported, and that's not an area where failure is an easy option.
Re:What happened to the 26 StarShip launches in 22 (Score:4, Informative)
Well, seems to me they have launched more often than weekly this calendar year so far (56 launches so far this year, I think)
And still have nine more launches this year.
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Well, seems to me they have launched more often than weekly this calendar year so far (56 launches so far this year, I think)
You do realize that in Musk's mail, cited in the article, he writes of StarShip, not Falcon 9 launches? Of which there have been zero to orbit?
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No, I didn't notice that he was making a promise for Starship, not Falcon.
My bad.
Though about 60 launches in a year still makes the rest of the world look like minor players in the space game...
Iain M. Banks (Score:3)
"Just Read the Instructions" is the name of a "Culture" ship in one of Iain M. Banks' novels. I highly recommend his novels for fans of Science Fiction.
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I really wanted SpaceX to work.... (Score:2, Insightful)
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But look where relying on the "stable and reliable" companies led to: Unsustainable, expensive hardware of yesteryear. It's just another kind of crazy. If you want to walk, you need to do one step after another and none will be the "right" step forever. Once you stop putting one foot forward you'll either stop or stumble.
Also China seems to have very much learned this lesson already. Look at what China is aiming at now: https://www.lianeon.org/p/a-lo... [lianeon.org] -- if the US should now fall back to relying again on
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I missed the SLS booster landing... (Score:2)
Anyone have a link to that video?
Insurance Companies in Alaska (Score:1)
Transfer from Thessaloniki Airport to Nikiti (Score:1)
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