Posted on 11/01/2019 6:28:29 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA has focused its vegetable-growing efforts on lettuce, which astronauts tend to while they live on the International Space Station. The orbiting laboratory poses different challenges than the Red Planet's surface, however, and crops that Mars visitors can expect to rely on may not be to everyone's taste.
"In fact, in this particular area the soils are more alkaline so this would be OK for growing asparagus and beans and not potatoes," NASA chief scientist Jim Green said during a presentation held here last week as part of the International Astronautical Congress of soil studied by NASA's Curiosity rover.
However you feel about asparagus, Green's statement is a testament to just how much scientists have learned about Mars and its soil. Curiosity was always designed to be a geologist and has been particularly adept at telling scientists about the Martian soil around its landing spot in Gale Crater.
"We find that we can get carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur out of the soil," Green said. "There's nitrates in the soils and [we've learned] that they are moist."
Scientists know all that about soil they have never seen for themselves or studied in their own laboratory. They know that based on data beamed back by dozens of orbiters and eight successful missions to the surface, and none of those robots has ever come back.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Asparagus and stinky pea. Good times.
Awesome. It only takes 2 a 3 years to establish a crop. Hope they don’t get too hungry until then. Mars is for morons. Even Martians don’t want to live there!
Sounds good to me, I like asparagus. Still staying on earth, though.
Mmmmm...slathered in butter and salt. Yes!
Not an issue worth the time discussing. We visited our moon a few times 5 decades ago. Collected some rocks and planted a flag at very great expense. Haven’t been back since. And, it will be many years before we go back.
The hazards to humans not to mention the expense of long-term deep space travel and exposure to zero gravity and radiation bombardment on the human body makes the attempt with current or near term tech a fools errand.
Ping.
Mars is supposed to be nitrogen poor. How do nitrates get into the soil without bacteria?
Someone is going to be very hungry = cannibalism
Awesome. It only takes 2 a 3 years to establish a crop. Hope they don’t get too hungry until then.
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Yeah, asparagus doesn’t make as much sense as a much faster-producing food crop such as corn or beans. On Earth, we call them annuals, vs perennials for plants, such as asparagus, that continue to live and produce season after season after being established. (Not sure how plants on Mars would adapt to whatever growing seasons that planet offers.)
Didn’t Matt Damon’s character in “The Martian” grow potatoes to survive?
wrapped in bacon and air fried in a NuWave....mmmmMMMMMMmmmmm!!!!
Hadn’t tried the bacon yet...Great Idea!
Yeah, it’ll just take gathering some mars dirt, dropping some seeds then sit back and wait for the food to flow from the ground. Never underestimate ignorance of farming and farming techniques. Most scifi writers set up extraterrestrial agriculture fairly well with descriptions of soil conditioning, or some sort of treatment.
THE LAST CENTURION by John Ringo goes into some wonderful detail of both family business farming and scratch “oh crap we gotta grow food” farming.
KYPD
Yeah, it’ll just take gathering some mars dirt, dropping some seeds then sit back and wait for the food to flow from the ground. Never underestimate ignorance of farming and farming techniques. Most scifi writers set up extraterrestrial agriculture fairly well with descriptions of soil conditioning, or some sort of treatment.
THE LAST CENTURION by John Ringo goes into some wonderful detail of both family business farming and scratch “oh crap we gotta grow food” farming.
KYPD
So you are saying we need to turn loose some feral hogs on Mars to propagate?
Explosive diarea from all the asparagus you have been eating.
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I’ve never tried asparagus. The more I hear about it, the more I’m afraid to.
Radishes, turnips, and peas. There is a 19 day radish and 45 day turnips. Peas take a bit longer.
There was a man in Scotland who weighed 860 pounds. He fasted under a doctors carefor something like 260 days and survived. Lost something like 320 pounds. On Mars fasting would give the radishes a chance to grow!
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