Mission to grow plants on the moon would have cost $300M old way but hitchhiking will cost $2M

Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space.

Plant growth will be an important part of space exploration in the future as NASA plans for long-duration missions to the moon. NASA scientists anticipate that astronauts may be able to grow plants on the moon, and the plants could be used to supplement meals.

If successful, the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team will make history by seeding life from Earth on another celestial body for the first time, paving the way for humans to set up more permanent habitation. “If we send plants and they thrive, then we probably can,” says Nasa.

Scientists, contractors and students will work together to create a small 1kg “self-contained habitat” containing seeds and germination material to send to the moon. To get there Nasa plans to ‘hitchhike’, delivering the payload via the Moon Express lander, a commercial spacecraft enrolled in the Google Lunar X Prize. “After landing in late 2015, water will be added to the seeds in the module and their growth will be monitored for 5-10 days and compared to Earth based controls. Seeds will include Arabidopsis, basil, and turnips,” said Nasa.

This will be the first life sciences experiment on another world and an important first step in the utilization of plants for human life support. Follow up experiments will improve the technology in the growth module and allow for more extensive plant experiments.

I’m wondering if creating an atmosphere on the Moon is a good thing.

Is it possible such a transformation might affect Earth’s physical relationship with the Moon, such as altering the Moon’s tidal effect on Earth?

The moon doesn't have enough mass for its gravity to hold an atmosphere down, so I doubt any realists want to try.

But even if we accept for the sake of argument that it could, converting part of the moon to an atmosphere wouldn't change its mass, and so tides would be unaffected. (Whatever stuff we could truck up there would be negligible compared to the overall mass of an entire, well, small planet.)

Why did you think it was not genuine?

Oh little things like the mass of a tunneling machine, the mass of a nuclear power plant, the fact that no reactors exist that are capable of running without human supervision, the lack of lifting capability into even near earth orbit for the anticipated mass, then the lack of any propulsion system that will get more than a few hundred kilos to Mars, the iffy nature of Mars landings. The public climate against lofting nuclear reactor into space, the total lack of anything worth obtaining when you get there, the inability to return even a few KG sample from the martian surface, the fact that the only reason to put a tunneling machine on mars would be to make tunnels and the only reason for tunnels would be to have people in them, the fact that there doesn't exist the capability to put people on Mars alive let alone return them, the staggering cost of such a mission without the lisghtest economic return. Little things like that led me to believe when you used the word "sensible" you were being sarcastic.

It is pretty much existing technology

Yes I just saw a special on nuclear powered tunneling machines at Walmart on black frids (Now that was sarcasm)

would save a huge amount of money in the long run

Saving even more money would be not doing it al all.

“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” Foust quoted Bolden as saying. “NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things.”

Muslim outreach.
Search for life on Mars.
Search for the origins of the universe.
Attempting to contact martians in other galaxies.
Propping up the Global Warming Scare scam.

NASA doesn't need to be doing ANY of the above. Another useless agency doomed because of willful negligence.

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