The paper explores the feasibility, challenges, and proposed solutions for establishing a sustainable human colony on Mars. It suggests that greenhouses on Mars would be ideal for agriculture, as they would allow limited sunlight to reach the crops directly. However, current technology greenhouse glass is incapable of blocking the deadly gamma radiation that constantly irradiates Mars. To address this issue, NASA scientists have designed an innovative hydroponic plant growth chamber, the Prototype Lunar Greenhouse, which can sustain a continuous vegetarian diet for astronauts.
The paper proposes a novel design for a greenhouse module that can supply 100 of the food needed for long-term exploration on Mars. For early missions, enough food will be sent to avoid needing greenhouses, but for future growth, the ability to grow food is necessary for sustained life on Mars. A hydroponics-based greenhouse offers a viable option for food production on Mars, as it can withstand the Martian climate and provide enough food while also sustaining life support systems.
Mars is essentially a vacuum compared to Earth, so greenhouses must have glass that is strong enough to withstand this pressure differential. Building a greenhouse at home can help learn how plants grow. Another option for thickening the atmosphere of Mars and raising the temperature is to set up solar-powered greenhouse gases.
Mark Watney turns astronauts’ artificial living quarters, the Hab, into an impressive makeshift greenhouse using plastic sheeting. However, even greenhouses on the surface won’t do enough to protect their plants from the deadly radiation of the Martian surface.
📹 Elon Musk: Greenhouse on Mars
Elon Musk discusses his past plans for acquiring more appropriations for NASA by sending a greenhouse to Mars. Elon Musk: …
Is The greenhouse effect good or bad for the planet?
Greenhouse gases play a crucial role in maintaining Earth’s temperature for life. Without the natural greenhouse effect, Earth’s heat would escape into space, resulting in an average temperature of around -20°C. The greenhouse effect occurs when most infrared radiation from the Sun passes through the atmosphere, but most is absorbed and re-emitted by greenhouse gas molecules and clouds. This warms the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere.
Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation in the form of heat, which is circulated in the atmosphere and eventually lost to space. They also increase the rate at which the atmosphere can absorb short-wave radiation from the Sun, but this has a weaker effect on global temperatures.
How to make a greenhouse on Mars?
Terraforming Mars is a complex project that could take decades or centuries, and it would require several millennia to transform the dry, desert-like land into a lush environment for humans, plants, and animals. Three proposed methods include large orbital mirrors that reflect sunlight and heat the Mars surface, greenhouse gas-producing factories to trap solar radiation, and smashing ammonia-heavy asteroids into the planet to raise greenhouse gas levels.
NASA is working on a solar sail propulsion system that uses large reflective mirrors to harness the sun’s radiation to propel spacecraft through space. Another use is to place these mirrors a few hundred thousand miles from Mars and use them to reflect the sun’s radiation and heat the Martian surface. Scientists have proposed building mylar mirrors with a diameter of 250 km and covering an area larger than Lake Michigan, which would weigh about 200, 000 tons and be too large to launch from Earth. However, there is the possibility that the mirrors could be constructed from material found in space.
What plants would be best to grow on Mars?
Researchers have found that alfalfa, a common hay for cattle, can grow well in nutrient-poor soil on simulated Martian regolith. The resulting powder can be used as fertilizer to help grow turnips, radishes, and lettuces in the barren Mars-like soil. The study co-author, Elizabeth Swanner, a biogeochemist at Iowa State University, believes that alfalfa can be used to fertilize the regolith and grow food plants that would not normally grow in this material.
How can we make greenhouse in Mars?
Terraforming Mars is a complex project that could take decades or centuries, and it would require several millennia to transform the dry, desert-like land into a lush environment for humans, plants, and animals. Three proposed methods include large orbital mirrors that reflect sunlight and heat the Mars surface, greenhouse gas-producing factories to trap solar radiation, and smashing ammonia-heavy asteroids into the planet to raise greenhouse gas levels.
NASA is working on a solar sail propulsion system that uses large reflective mirrors to harness the sun’s radiation to propel spacecraft through space. Another use is to place these mirrors a few hundred thousand miles from Mars and use them to reflect the sun’s radiation and heat the Martian surface. Scientists have proposed building mylar mirrors with a diameter of 250 km and covering an area larger than Lake Michigan, which would weigh about 200, 000 tons and be too large to launch from Earth. However, there is the possibility that the mirrors could be constructed from material found in space.
Is the greenhouse effect stronger on Mars than it is on Earth?
Mars’ climate is significantly different from Earth’s due to its thin atmosphere, mainly composed of carbon dioxide, and its distance from the sun. This results in a negligible greenhouse effect, resulting in a lower temperature. Venus, on the other hand, has a 100x denser atmosphere and 96 of its atmosphere is carbon dioxide, creating an enormous greenhouse effect that increases its temperature by approximately 462°C. This is hot enough to melt lead.
The greenhouse effect on Venus doubles the absolute temperature from what it would be without an atmosphere. Despite having similar atmospheres, interiors, surfaces, and greenhouse gases, the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere significantly change the planets’ temperatures. Carbon dioxide dominates the greenhouse gases in these planets, but the warming on them varies significantly.
How can we increase greenhouse gases on Mars?
Scientists are exploring the possibility of using large Mylar disks to reflect sunlight onto Mars and heat the surface, potentially releasing greenhouse gases over time. However, the challenge lies in bringing these large mirrors into space, which would likely require construction on Mars. Alternatively, greenhouse gas-producing factories could be built to trap solar radiation and build a thicker Martian atmosphere. The materials for these factories could be shipped to Mars or made from Martian elements.
Lastly, scientists are considering attaching nuclear, thermal-rocket engines to ammonia-heavy asteroids, causing them to crash into Mars and release their ammonia and water, potentially raising Mars’ greenhouse gas levels. The rocket engines could move the asteroids 3 miles per second for ten years before shutting down and allowing them to coast into Mars.
Would a greenhouse work on Mars?
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is sponsoring a research project aimed at designing life on Mars. The project, which is expected to be realized within a decade or more, aims to enable plants to survive on Mars by adding features from microscopic organisms called extremophiles that live in the most inhospitable environments on Earth. The team uses gene splicing techniques to remove useful genes from extremophiles and add them to plants.
The current NIAC funding pays for “proof of concept” work that demonstrates the feasibility of the team’s idea and identifies the technical challenges that must be overcome for Martian plants to become a reality. To prove their concept, the team took a gene from “Pyrococcus furiosus”, a microbe that lives in the scalding water issuing from deep sea vents, and inserted it into tobacco cells. The gene, “superoxide reductase”, removes toxic oxygen atoms and molecules generated in organisms under stress. The gene was successfully incorporated into the tobacco cells and functioned without harming them.
The team plans to transform plants with genes for cold tolerance as the next step in their research. They also used their NIAC concept as an educational experience, giving undergraduate students at North Carolina State the challenge of selecting features from existing organisms that would be useful for Martian plants and designing ecosystems for Martian greenhouses. The features they are incorporating in Martian plants, like cold and drought tolerance, will also help crops bear severe weather on Earth, so this work has practical application.
NIAC was created in 1998 to solicit revolutionary concepts from people and organizations outside NASA. The Universities Space Research Association operates NIAC for NASA. This type of long-term research, with an uncertain path to success, is only possible with an organization like NIAC that doesn’t mind taking a chance for the possibility of an incredible breakthrough.
Are greenhouses good for the planet?
Greenhouses, while not the primary contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, their energy-intensive operation, especially in heating and artificial lighting, raises environmental concerns. Innovations like the “closed greenhouse” system aim to reduce energy consumption and promote environmental control. However, traditional greenhouses, often powered by non-renewable energy sources, significantly contribute to CO2 emissions, emitting approximately 575kg of CO2 per ton of harvested lettuce.
Is it possible to grow green plants on Mars?
Mars’ soil, despite having essential nutrients, is often rocky, coarse, and deficient in organic matter and other nutrients. However, studies using simulant soils have shown that plants can germinate and grow, albeit not as vigorously as on Earth. Fertilizers could facilitate plant growth, as seen in Ridley Scott’s 2015 film The Martian.
If humans could change the atmosphere and climate on Mars, making it more hospitable for growing plants, as popularized in science fiction like The Mars Trilogy, perhaps humans could make large-scale, wholesale changes to planetary environments. However, current struggles to control climate change on Earth make such abilities far off in the future. The best bet for growing grass and trees on Mars involves using climate-controlled habitats where the soils are augmented by fertilizer.
Why is there no greenhouse effect on Mars?
Mars, unlike Venus, has a very low greenhouse effect due to its thin atmosphere and lack of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This results in extreme temperature contrasts between day and night and sun or shade. However, scientists agree that Mars was warmer in the past and had oceans, indicating a different atmosphere. The Mars Express mission, set to launch in May 2003, aims to answer this question.
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has a moderate greenhouse effect due to high concentrations of methane in its atmosphere. Astronomers have compared Titan to early Earth, suggesting it would be a suitable place for life if its surface was not so cold. Understanding the factors influencing Titan’s climate would be beneficial for understanding other planets, as it would provide valuable insights into the planet’s climate.
Are greenhouses truly eco-friendly?
Greenhouses represent a sustainable method of food production that preserves surrounding ecosystems and wildlife by maintaining undisturbed conditions. However, if not designed with sustainability in mind, they can be a significant consumer of energy and water.
📹 The Real Problem with Growing Plants in Lunar and Martian Soil
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We need a robotic plant growing experiment on Mars: Future Agriculture Research Mars Experimentation Robot (FARMER) that can sow and reap, then Evaluate, Analyze & Test (EAT) Mars-grown produce for its potential use in Humans On Mars Extended Stay Technology Experiment And Development Stations (HOMESTEADS).
A lot of crop plants (like forest trees) need symbiotic mycorrhizae-type fungi to help them draw moisture and minerals from the soil. A problem with overfertilized soil is the lack of these fungi. Probably processed feces (though important) would not suffice for growing potatoes effectively. In the experiment, the grass is a little defined addition to the substrate and could easily contain some of the fungi. Most likely a Martian farmer will need a sample from terrestrial soil as an inoculum for microorganisms in addition to processed feces and seed potatoes.
What ‘The Martian’ missed and this article also, is that the soil on Earth is an ecosystem mostly of microbes. Plants can take up the most nutrients, when this ecosystem is as rich as possible. To process faeces like in ‘The Martian’, certain bacteria are needed that free the nitrogen from the larger organic molecules in the faeces. Only then it is available for plants. Plants cannot grow directly on human faeces or urine, they would die!
I recently found out about a fungus that uses a method called radiosythesis to turn gamma radiation into energy in a roughly similar manner to photosynthesis. I’m curious if this method of obtaining energy on Mars is feasible considering how much radiation makes it onto the surface of Mars. It wouldn’t be for consumption but for terraforming purposes obviously.
awesome. how hard would it be to ship some dried grass clippings with some food and the first mars habitat arrivals? and they can build and reuse that same soil and keep the clippings coming from the new veggies they grow. while adding in a little more unprocessed regolith along the way to make even nutritious soil.
Growing plants on Mars will be EXTREMELY hard, the simulations are always over optimistic, and never fully model the situation i.e. radiation, 1/100th atmosphere, 1/5th gravity. Even the toxicity of perchlorates are dealt with by just dumping organic matter and rinsing with water,which both will be on short invaluable supply. Don’t get me wrong, I want this to happen, its vital – but the current administration doesn’t seem committed with no sense of urgency. All our eggs are in the SpaceX basket right now, once they prove landings on the moon and get ships to Mars, then a fire will be lit under the scientific and engineering community.
There was a small island off the coast of Ireland. It didn’t have any soil, just rocks. The people who colonized the island took sand and seaweed, mixed them together and covered the island with about a foot of this sand and seaweed mixture. It worked great. They were able to plant crops. The only problem is, it would be expensive to send tons of seaweed, grass, or whatever to Mars to mix with the soil. It would be necessary though. They should take insects and bacteria from the soil in Antarctica and ship them to Mars first. Possibly even Lichens. Different organisms to get things started.
Autonomous construction systems are likely to be sent to Mars before any lengthy crewed missions. Aside from building workshops and habitats, etc, they could also set up automated plant nurseries. The soil composition could be remotely monitored and adjusted to produce fertile soil for plants. The produce could be harvested, analysed, and frozen to await the arrival of the first astronaus.
The exploration of the planet Mars is something that should certainly be done for scientific reasons, but that should be left to robots. Elon Musk’s dream of building cities on Mars is completely insane. Perhaps eventually there will be a base with some humans crazy and reckless enough to want to ruin the rest of their lives with high radiation exposures and low gravity but from there to wanting to build colonies where humans can reproduce and doom those poor children to a miserable life, there is a huge stretch that to me is insurmountable. As the lyrics of Rocket Man says, Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
A lot of websites on YouTube are blamed for peoples weak productivity. Reaction articles, Various barely dressed woman articles, fighting articles, many and ill use it twice for effect many useless vids are the reason peopple got caught down rabbit holes. Well I am here to say, that this website is my Kryponite, I get weak when I see them as I cant help but watch them. So what about the narration, the coloring, the pictures, the vast knowledge shared and absorbed, again so what about that stuff if I cant get work done in order to have a lifestyle where I can enjoy the universe and its “treats” hahaha So in closing, This website is the real culprit. The ultimate reason work isnt done on time, hahahaha. my sarcasm has no bounds, ha hope the Algo picks up on it and doesnt peg me as Hate speech. Anyway, im a texture/rock hound/sculpture fan. and although i have just only found you recently, as in 3 hours ago, I havent left you website, hahaha BRAVO!!!
349 ‘Dislikes’ people who didn’t study science at school and didn’t understand this article. ‘Only Spinach struggling to perform’…everyone (apart from Popeye) hates spinach anyway, so no tears shed over that result 🙂 I hope someone from Earth gets to eat a ‘Mars Bar’ on Mars before I shuffle off this mortal coil 🙂
One thing to note, the NASA image that attempts to show that martian soil has the required minerals, but that same image notes that although they have been detected, they haven’t all been detected in one place and in the required quantities, so you would need to source and process them from where they are available; just like we do on Earth when we need to fortify soul.
For me biggest problem would be temperatures on mars… no plant would grow when it’s up to +27C during day on equator and same place at night is -90C. So plants should be only in heated spaces like glasshouses… this would make in my opinion whole process extreme expensive… without releasing into mars atmosphere a lot of gases to terraform this planet it’s like trying to life autonomously on north or south pole on earth whole year without supply. First company prove this is possible can try same thing on mars…
Really enjoyed that movie, and you pretty much answered all my question about Martian soil issues, except one, does Mars have a ionosphere to protect it surface from uv rays, and what effect does high levels of UV have on soil, experiments on earth showed nothing would grow, so without the ozone layer, which is why they banned many chemicals that destroy ozone, and if I’m not mistaken that’s another threat from climate change, that methane and other greenhouse gases, along with rising temperatures will destroy earth ionosphere, again were screwed, everyone will need to move underground, dome cities like in “Logan’s Run” or dome cities in the oceans…just a thought!!!
Quick thought. Growing food on Mars for the first several years makes no sense to me. A plant can only produce a mass of edible if it can consume a mass of consumables to convert to said edible food. So unless those plant consumables can be reliable and safely sourced on Mars, we have to transport them. It woukd be more efficient to transport already grown and processed food products to save weight. Now sure, over time we could amend the soil with waste matter and suppliment with other needed consumables and make growing feasable. But the circle of life as it is, can only be efficient when all 9f the required elements are present. But im not a rocket surgeon so its just a thought.
(2:49) Using feces as fertilizer must be done with measurement, not just for the presence of harmful bacterial, but it can also increase the concentration of heavy metals and other toxins in the soil. As previously mentioned, some elements are essential, but only in small amounts, and are toxic in larger doses.
Tell me if I’m mistaken here but it seems like our creator encompassed three-quarters of our planet with a possible future fuel source: seawater. He also made Mars devoid of any liquid water, so He made sure to place perchlorates in the soil so that way we would have a fuel source as well. Now that I think about it, the entire solar system is full of fuel sources.
I recall a long-ago science fiction tale about a spaceship crew marooned on a Mars-hostile-to-Terran-life planet. As the crew members died, their bodies were buried in the soil of the planet. Eventually, the last crew member succumbed to the hostile conditions and headed off to “Boot Hill” to “be with his shipmates.” Quite to his surprise, he found Terrestrial plants growing among the graves; the planet merely needed some “fertilizer” to begin the “Terraforming” of the planet. (Wishful thinking for Mars, but one never knows how far the likes of Weyland-Yutani will proceed with their atmosphere processors in a “shake and bake” colony.)
Here’s a question, is there any groups that are trying to figure out a way to remotely build a station on Mars like utilizing a impact crater as a starting point a dome can be flown up in pieces and remotely put together in the crater with a few feet of depth and then sealed with the Martian dirt and then a machine inside basically turning the Martian soil into so you’ll that can sustain plants as well is the oxygen in water that it’s talking about in the story
Perchlorates have been a problem in most agricultural systems I’m aware of, and a consideration in the rest. It’s now possible to either break them up and render the medium safe, or to remove them. It’s not a huge problem, as such, beyond the idea of taking the equipment/ materials to another planet!
While it would be awesome to use the growing media available on Mars, a large percentage of fresh veggies found in the supermarket never touched soil and the fertility of most virgin soils on Earth would only provide nutrients enough for a few growing cycles without the adding nutrients. Artificial growing media is very lightweight and can be compressed and even be included as part of the heat shield insulation on a Mars station landing craft, for instance Rockwool and perlite have excellent heat insulation properties and are commonly used as media in hydroponic systems. The difficult problem is not growing media but water and nutrients.
As Praxideke Meng mentioned on the Expanse “It’s the basic obstacle of artificial ecosystems. In a normal evolutionary environment, there’s enough diversity to cushion the system when something catastrophic happens. That’s nature. Catastrophic things happen all the time. But nothing we can build has the depth. One thing goes wrong, and there’s only a few compensatory pathways that can step in. They get overstressed. Fall out of balance. When the next one fails, there are even fewer paths, and then they’re more stressed. It’s a simple complex system. That’s the technical name for it. Because it’s simple, it’s prone to cascades, and because it’s complex, you can’t predict what’s going to fail. Or how. It’s computationally impossible” While possible, a multilayer approach will be needed – otherwise our real-life explorers will end up with a cascade failure.
I think we should look into plants that can survive in arctic volcanic environments. They seem the most likely to be able to survive on Mars. They are used to low sunlight, cold temperatures, low nutrient soil and few insects to help pollinate. We could experiment and research with plants in as close as possible re-creation environment of Mars and then evenutally send a probe to Mars with the best plant candidates and have a rover do some gardening on Mars. Imagine the implications if the plants actually managed to take root and grow. Even if they eventually die it means life on Mars is possible. God I wish I could work for NASA and do research like this.
Would it be possible to introduce large scale perchlorate eating bacteria to begin terraforming mars? We obviously have many, many challenges to overcome before we can honestly hope to colonize, or even send any lengthy missions there. At some point we will have to introduce Earth originating organics to Mars, if we plan to make it at least more hospitable than outer space. Perhaps liberating oxygen from the soil and the poles would be a good start
Very skeptical that Martian soil can be used for growing human rated food without lots of costly pre processing. Hydroponics seems a safer bet. Make/filter clean water on Mars, identify deposits of perchlorate free minerals or bring basic plant nutrients to start process. Perhaps a closed cycle acquaponic system could be the ticket if fish can adapt to the 1/3 gravity.
I think it’s possible, the movie even shows you that you could if you prep it. None the less if we are going to try to grow food on mars we’d have to build a station somewhere on mars then bring earth soil and grow like we would in a green house atleast until we figure out how to make mars dirt healthy
Looks up vertical farming with light phonics. If you had a power source you can grow everything you need without soil. You use low voltage LED strip light, so you don’t have to fight with the lower sunlight on mars. What you will need is a bit of water and some power then you are all set. This process is already done on earth on a commercial level
I understand how precious ever bit of space is on a probe shot into space, but maybe it’s time to do more than just take pictures and measure the dirt. Include some type of planting mechanism and target one of the more ‘fertile’ areas. Even if it’s not edible plants. If any degree of success, seems it would start a cycle that could only help future possible colonies.
The Martian got more than a few things wrong. Most glaringly, like so many Mars films and book, the wind storm, or more precisely its force. Because of the low atmospheric pressure on Mars surface, that is only about 1% of Earth’s, the strongest winds on Mars would be comparable to 20 mph here. Maybe enough force to blow over your garbage can but not going to endanger a rocket or blow more than dust around. That is another thing. The dust storms are too often shown not just with forceful winds but also large particulates and even stones being moved around. This just isn’t the case. It is literally very fine dust smaller than sand. It poses a threat to filters and solar panels but little danger to structures. In fact it is thought that these dust storms often become self sustaining as they could generate a lot of static electricity that helps fuel the disturbance.
The biggest problem I see with Mars is that there really isn’t much of an energy budget, and there are few ways to improve it. It gets half the solar energy of Earth so solar won’t produce a lot of energy, but with the thin atmosphere, wind would be even worse. Without an oxygen atmosphere you can’t burn anything without reducing what you have to breathe, assuming you did find something to burn. And without bodies of water, we can’t use hydroelectric. And it’s not like we can use animal power like we have here for millennia. Nuclear batteries have to come from Earth, don’t produce THAT much power, and don’t last forever. (Plus whatever safety concerns you have with plutonium power sources.) It’s hard to see how colonization could ever become self-sustaining with those limitations. It would be cool, but….
If you shield it from all the solar radiation, why not? It amazes me sometimes that even qualified scientists sometimes don’t grasp the fact that you can’t terra-form Mars until you figure out a way to create a stronger magnetic field. If Mars was alive in the past, loss of a magnetic field due to a cooled core is why it is dead now. (it may not be entirely dead, i know) Any atmosphere produced will just blow away in the solar wind.
Terraforming Mars to me would involve photosynthesis where we breath in o2 from the plants, then we exhale co2 which the plants in turn take in co2 and output o2. We would, because the animals we put would die in Mar’s co2 atmosphere, put plants there first then in timing we put lots of animals there to cycle photosynthesis. This would this would balance Mars out nicely. Didn’t mean to put this on sandra, it’s kev hall
I visited Disney years ago and saw plants growing in hydroponic (without soil) environment; amazing – then all you need to find is water on a planet (Mars does have it at the poles), get the temperature/light/energy conditions right and ship in essential nutrients, then you only have to send additional vitamins/special products that can’t be grown locally to supplement humans. Mushrooms can grow without light because they are not plants. This means they don’t have chlorophyll and absorb energy from the sun.
The two biggest problems: 1. Super thin atmosphere. Mars’ atmospheric pressure is less than 1% of Earth’s. 2. Radiation. Since Mars has no viable magnetic field both solar wind and interstellar radiation strike the surface. Also, since Mars’ atmosphere is so thin, X-rays and high energy UV-B ultraviolet are issues. This stuff is a pipe dream considering the present state of technology.
Thanks for another informative article! I wish they would work as hard or harder on making our own planet of some 8 billion people safe for growing crops or to deal with the massive drought and climate change going on worldwide. The way the world is we desperately need to shift priorities and sorry, for now no living on Mars, SpaceX… sports cars in orbit… sapping funds and talent needed here. I’m breaking my own former viewpoints, but the situation here is dire! Mars is not a quick solution, although I’m in favor of exploration as it is and with Webb, ELT… quantum computing… and a lot of other scientific endeavors. I saw an interesting short article on what Denmark is doing with the massive growing of crops in indoor controlled environments. We face rapidly advancing food and water shortages, homelessness, privately owned prisons, and unleashed war machine corporate profiteering! The world should look to the Scandinavian countries and their influence to a better world, well… except for the treatment of Julian Assange… they could free him immediately and they don’t, and revoke the Nobel from Obama…
I am an agric engineer – science of soil and water resources department, the plants need many nutrients and bio-life in in the soil to grow, also the some roots needs bacteria “rhyzobium” within to exchange nitrogen with hydrocarbons and don’t forget the soil on the Mars is dust/sand not a soil that can’t hold the water supplying, so it’s impossible to grow plants on Mars.
I wonder why no one worries about the nighttime temperatures on Mars? It falls to well below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s like subjecting your crops to an arctic winter every night. So it wouldn’t matter what you did to the soil. Your plants will freeze to death every night, even if you could get them to germinate with temperature swings like that. And sure you could over come this with a thermally controlled green house but where is the energy for that going to come from? Think about the scientists that over-winter in Antarctica. They depend on lifelines from about 7 different countries and they don’t try to grow anything.
also nitrogen could be a problem. Plants need organic nitrogen to grow, which is produced by microorganism in the ground. So without them, the plants cant really use the nitrogen. clover or canola could be helping though, as they use a sinergy with some bacteria who produce plant-useable nitrogen. -just a farmer point of view 🙂
I think this is about the only scenario Id support gmo crop and plant development for so long as we could ensure they never got released on earth and arnt used for human consumption. Maybe we should come up with a top 10 list one day that includes a couple trees, flowers, moss, grain, leafy green, cactus, fruit, tubers etc from currently edible species on earth. I think itd be cool to watch how they developed, if they did, and what, if any, changes happened to them on a different planet without human intervention. It’s an uninhabited hostile radioactive wasteland. I dont see much danger in that at the moment.
I’m really thankful for this website!you are certainly spending a lot of time researching, so you provide us a huge ammount of well-served information.i will say that there are cases of space objects to act a little more different than our replicated testing environments here on earth,so we might see more positive results than we expected when experimenting in real space environments.Great article man!
honestly they could get further by just sending up about 100 lbs of grass seed and spread it around in regions where they know moisture occurs and just keep sending a few missions up every year to continue spreading it around… grass grows quickest so it’ll adapt to the lower atmosphere and higher radiation levels, though they could just as easily engineer grass here to live in those conditions and then send them up. basically the grass will help balance the soil, produce oxygen and help retain water. rather than waste all this time trying to start a colony they could be seeding the planet in the meantime for FAR less $$$ and you wouldn’t have to worry as much about when you send the mission out if you do it in frequent intervals so something is always on it’s way there… nature is prolific and it always finds a way! wouldn’t be too difficult to literally outfit a $60 garden cart with a battery powered seed spreader/motor and pack it into a lighter weight rocket which will keep costs down. total payload weight of the package would be maybe 200 lbs not including the rocket capsule so you could even send a few up at a time if you wanted on some of the larger rockets. could probably also get away with smaller plants that are able to survive in more inhospitable climates that are also capable of being pollenated via the wind, they also shouldn’t be too affected by the extra hour or so that Mars has in it’s day so the day/night cycle for them is going to be near identical.
Please forgive my ignorants but I was led to believe that soil or dirt were the broken down remains of organic matter. Isn’t dirt just the remains of leaves and plants and animals? can someone explain this to me please? because I don’t understand how there could be soil on Mars. shouldn’t it all be sand and rock? please explain. ty.
I think we would need to actually get Mars organically active if we ever wanted to colonize it. There has to be an atmosphere and a biosphere that could handle stressers. Otherwise a small accident or happening could destroy all of it. We need something that can survive sabotage, drought, weather….we need a “something like” Earth.
I wonder if people haven’t been mislead of the likelihood for Martian settlements because of articles like this. The problems of living on Mars are daunting and IMO it seems more likely than not that it won’t happen. Low gravity, radiation and the extreme cost of even limited Martian colonies don’t have any proven solutions right now. And there are a lot of other known problems plus presumably a lot of unknown problems.
This is not a sustainable system, if you kept using the system they did in the Martian, the fertilizer and soil would become less healthy every time around you grew/ate the crops, You need to eventually find all the things in fertilizer like nitrogen from somewhere else on Mars, or malnutrition and eventual starvation is guaranteed.
The plants growing on the Moon and Mars would have to be protected from solar and cosmic radiation, since both the Moon & Mars do not have the natural protection produced by a magnetosphere . The heavy metals in the soil have been shown to hinder the plant’s ability to carry water by osmosis. This would greatly hinder plant growth & health.
The Martian makes the same mistake that so many other Mars movies do simply as an excuse to create a dramatic effect. It severely exaggerates the force of the wind. Mars’ atmospheric pressure at the surface is 1% of the Earth’s. That makes the strongest winds ever measured there are just over 60 mph (at the surface during a dust storm) and that would have a maximum force similar to a 6 mph wind here. (Reports of 200 kph winds are unsubstantiated.) The dust storms on Mars are just that…dust, not sand. It is also theorized that static electricity, generated by the dust in the dry atmosphere, and the low gravity help propagate and sustain them. In short the winds on Mars would have trouble blowing over a garbage can and would be no threat to a rocket on the surface. Even the constant cleaning of the solar panels he is shown doing is likely not going to be as much of an issue as this was not a problem for the rovers on Mars that operated years longer then expected (6 month original estimate) despite not having any method of cleaning their solar panels. Often the little bit of dust that accumulated would clear itself prompting more speculation about static charge in the atmosphere. Not sure why they never built a simple brush or something to clear the dust from the panels into that billion dollar piece of equipment. Amusingly enough the clean solar panels have fueled conspiracy theories ranging from the rovers actually being on Earth to little green men with Windex cleaning them off, lol.
A colony on Mars is a long. long way away. Growing food is only one problem and is actually the easiest problem to solve. One of the biggest problems and one that we have no foreseeable solution for is the Martian gravity. The gravity on Mars is 38% of gravity on Earth and this posses serious physiological problems for any human colonisation. The obvious being your body becomes so weak you’ll never be able to get off the surface of the planet and return to Earth and we don’t know if the human body can survive prolonged exposure to such low gravity forces. A trip to Mars would be a certain one way ticket with no guarantee you’ll survive on Mars for very long at all.