Matsuda Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 Everyone dreams about what living on some distant celestial body would be like. The human race has only ever stepped foot on our moon, though, and it’s not a habitable environment. However, NASA is looking to change that, starting with growing plants on the lunar surface.While we’re not even remotely close to having sci-fi domed habitable zones on anything but Earth, growing plants is a vital step toward sustainability in a new environment. Aside from the obvious life support that vegetation would provide — air, food, and water — it would also provide another integral aspect to a habitable lunar environment. Plants react to aspects of a harsh environment similarly to humans, as their genetic material can be damaged by radiation.A relatively safe way to test long-term lunar exposure is to send some plants up there and monitor their health. NASA likens this to being like sending a canary into a coal mine. Rather than making the trip and dropping the plants off itself, NASA plans to use commercial spaceflight as the vehicle by which the plants will be sent up to the moon.Obviously, the plants can’t be embedded into the lunar surface then left alone, so NASA is constructing a small, lightweight (a little over two pounds), self-sustaining habitat for the vegetation. The habitat will be delivered to the moon via the Moon Express, a lunar lander that’s part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition to create a robotic spacecraft that can fly to and land on the moon.Once the lander arrives on the moon, water will be added to basil, turnip, and Arabidopsis (a small flowering plant) seeds kept in the habitat, then monitored for five to 10 days and compared to controls back on Earth. NASA will also monitor the actual habitat itself, looking toward its scalability since a two-pound habitat won’t support human life. Currently, the chamber can support 10 basil seeds, 10 turnip seeds, and around 100 Arabidopsis seeds. It also holds the bit of water that initiates the germination process, and uses the natural sunlight that reaches the moon to support the plant life.In order to study the quality of the plant growth and movement, the habitat will take images and beam them back home.If NASA doesn’t run into any unexpected bumps, its long-term plans include attempting to grow a more diverse crop of plants, longer growth periods, and reproduction experiments. The longer the experiments, the more we’ll learn about the long-term effects of a lunar environment on Earth plants. Growing turnips on the moon in a man-made pod won’t directly lead to Luna Park, but its an important step toward a long-term stay on the lunar surface.Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ambrocious Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 (edited) 30-50 years of terraforming the moon in massive proportions with all sorts of vegetables, grasses and even tree's would pave the way for people to be able to live in small colonies on the moon in about 30 years and then in about 50 years there will already be cities on the moon I bet. I have a more positive outlook on life now but I still see the dangers of an old dying system of tyranny that would attempt to stop people from going to the moon at will. If technology should arise to allow people to leave this Earth on our own will with out own crafts, this will be a true sign of liberty and freedom; we will no longer be bound by simple lawn but by then (50-100 years from now) I would hope people will have a form of Autonomy that everyone agrees to follow.Autonomy is self governance and I think we may reach that phase of human life within 100 years...why not dare to hope eh? Autonomy is the ULTIMATE last phase of a natural human evolution of freedom and that is something we should all reach for and imagine just how exactly that would be possible. Start imagining now how it might be done...it may take a while but it will be worth it.The point to life and the reason for humanity is to progress forward in liberty that increases which will be matched with our innate understanding that life is valuable and we must cherish each other as friends and family. We are all human beings, even the wealthy ones that think they are the only true human beings. Human beings are meant to progress from one form of freedom to another while maintaining harmony with one another. It doesn't matter how the system gets constructed, it just needs to be built and the people must be willing to attempt to live in a structure of self governance that is non intrusive to one another. Edited December 3, 2013 by Ambrocious Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turk Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 Autonomy still requires state and government, thus the ULTIMATE last phase of a natural human evolution of freedom is stateless non-governed societies speaking same universal language w/o borders. This is described in Utopia by T. Moore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dMog Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 Autonomy still requires state and government, thus the ULTIMATE last phase of a natural human evolution of freedom is stateless non-governed societies speaking same universal language w/o borders. This is described in Utopia by T. Moore.only one thing will stop this....mans greed...not just speaking about monetary greed either Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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