An Astronaut Gardener On The Moon - Summits Of Sunlight And Vast Lunar Caves In Low Gravity

science20.com ^ | October 9th 2016 11:46 AM | Robert Walker

[BenLurkin]

The lunar caves also work out well compared to Mars, as we'll see. They have a constant temperature, actually a little warmer than the sunlit summits, at -20° C. Again, at those temperatures, it would be easy to warm up a lunar cave habitat or greenhouse enough for plants, if it is well insulated, as it would be. The night time darkness is the main problem with the caves, but as it turns out, its two weeks long night is not nearly as problematic for plants as you might think. That's the result of some rather surprising experiments with wheat, beet etc done by the Russians, and advances in LED technology.

We now know that the moon has water ice and other volatiles at the poles,. so there may well be plenty of water there for gardening. It is in darkness, and so can't be photographed from orbit, and the two main ways of detecting it from orbit (radar and reduced levels of neutron emissions) come up with different answers.... But some think it is up to two meters thick layers of ice, and if so it may be easy to extract, with possibly hundreds of millions of tons, or a billion tons of them enough water for everyone in a city of a million to have the equivalent of an olympic swimming lane filled with water.

...

he easiest way to grow plants for food in space is to use soilless gardening with hydroponic solutions or with aeroponics where plants are grown with roots suspended in a fine mist (uses much less water).

[chajin]

Pierre Boulle, who is best known for writing the novel Planet of the Apes and The Bridge over the River Kwai, also wrote Garden on the Moon in 1964, about a Japanese astronaut who becomes the first man on the moon, beating both the Soviets and the Americans, because he was willing to land there without any means of returning. In the novel, Kanashima, the astronaut scientist, plants a Japanese garden before his death. The book is anachronistic now, of course.

[BipolarBob]

I saw a documentary where Matt Damon did something similar on Mars.

/s

[marktwain]

I read the article.

They overstate the power density of an experimental battery by 1000X. The mistake Kilowatthours for watthours.

pretty significant difference.

[T-Bone Texan]

But Matt Damon “scienced the shit out of it”, or something.

[BipolarBob]

The mistake Kilowatthours for watthours.

So what you're saying is being off by a 1000X is pretty significant in government terms.

[marktwain]

I am saying 1000x is a big mistake. It means they were seeing what they wanted to see.

If batteries with the performance they suggested existed, or were even possible, it would be a game changing technology on the order of the internal combustion engine.