Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Robot Parade Leader]

I guess this would be a place to discuss what the thread title says. 12 Bay seems to be a fairly open minded place that likes to think about stuff similar enough to this.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/15/farming-on-mars-nasa/

I know it's fox news, but I don't think there is much spin on this one. Besides, as a conversation piece it still works either way.

The article is on possible future farming on mars. This is one of those ideas that lets my imagination run free for a bit. It seems like a technically difficult and interesting challenge in its own little way. The whole idea of going to Mars seems to be as a stepping stone to going somewhere else and hopefully somewhere better.

Earth First?
Basically they're talking about farming in a desert (with no air , radiation problems, and millions of miles away). I kinda have to wonder why they don't do more of that here on earth. We've got tons of deserts that do have air. If we could find a way to stabilize the population, the surface area of the Sahara Desert alone could provide enough land to feed all of Africa if we could use some kind of space aged greenhouse tech to grow plants there. It seems like practically growing things on a large scale in a major earth desert would be something we'd wanna do before we set off for another planet. (large scale growing easier here than Mars).

Don't get me wrong, I get that economics is the problem (pretty much always), but before we spend however many billions or trillions of dollars and people's lives going to Mars, shouldn't we do it on earth?

Once on another planet (or in space I guess):

I'm not really sure how things would work given the problems they're talking about. Radiation, air pressure, isolation are a few that come to mind. They don't seem to get into the idea of how anybody would go about fixing many of these in the article above except by using terms like "radiation shield," but we never seem to get a whole bunch of details about how that would work.

I don't know, what do you think? I imagine this is basically where humanity's future is going to end up being. We either learn to use the space we have better (urban farming, underwater/onsea, using terrain we usually don't/can't), or find new places.

[Loud Whispers]

Earth First?
Basically they're talking about farming in a desert (with no air , radiation problems, and millions of miles away). I kinda have to wonder why they don't do more of that here on earth.

It's not practical on an industrial scale. Or really on Mars as of now.

1. Get power source.
2. Get water source.
3. Get arable land.
4. Get hardy crops.
Then we can farm on Mars. It'd probably be a nice first step towards terraforming, but I'd personally much rather see projects like this first aimed towards the moon.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Earth First?
Basically they're talking about farming in a desert (with no air , radiation problems, and millions of miles away). I kinda have to wonder why they don't do more of that here on earth.

It's not practical on an industrial scale. Or really on Mars as of now.

1. Get power source.
2. Get water source.
3. Get arable land.
4. Get hardy crops.
Then we can farm on Mars. It'd probably be a nice first step towards terraforming, but I'd personally much rather see projects like this first aimed towards the moon.

That's kinda the problem isn't it? I mean it isn't productive on an industrial scale, sure. Sadly, it doesn't look like it's practical on much of any scale, which is really sad.

I dunno, they're talking about trying this in a few years. Is that just talk? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I'm inclined to think it is, but then who knows.   

Good link. I really think that maybe it would help us a lot if we could somehow grow something in the desert. Surface, maybe something an animal could graze on, at best? Underground, I know this is more DF than truth at this point, but some kind of fungus?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus_farming#Indoor_trays

Teraforming. I have to think we could do something to "make the desert bloom" at least here on earth. Don't get me wrong, it may be impractical and it isn't like anybody is going to pay for it, but just.... I really sorta wonder about the water cycle, because it produces fresh water from salt water (evaporation, rain, etc). I kinda thing large reservoirs might do the trick. Dams, holding tanks, I mean it can't be impossible, can it? Sure impractical, yeah, but impossible? Really?

Moon, IIRC, lacks certain chemicals needed for plant life, so you'd have to import soil, or use a long process (anything from 10-100 years) breaking down the rocks via lichens, grasses, trees etc., and adding fertilizers to the plants to ensure they can grow.

The moon isn't as good as Mars, because, IIRC, the martian surface is fairly good when it comes to those chemicals.

Well, I'm pretty sure you're gonna need something like hydroponics wherever you go, at least for a long time. Right?

[10ebbor10]

As for making the desert bloom; we're heading towards that anyway, as the Sahara used to be lush, until the earth cooled too much. We keep global warming, the Sahara may see regular rainfall again.

IIRC, Sahara would just become drier and expand again. It's the Gobi dessert that becomes lush.

Oh, and we don't use terraforming on earth, for a variety of reasons. Not only is it bloody expensive, there's also lot's of collateral, and mainly, ecosystems are connected. Transforming the sahara will result in the death of the Amazon forest, for example. (Nutrient rich sand)

[Eagleon]

Hydroponics is probably the best idea, really. I mean, easier, water is freely available etc.

So yeah, soil-based farming's probably not a good idea on mars, the moon or wherever until later in the colony's development.

As for making the desert bloom; we're heading towards that anyway, as the Sahara used to be lush, until the earth cooled too much. We keep global warming, the Sahara may see regular rainfall again.

Still, I prefer earth as is, and I don't want GW to escalate.

As I understand it, it's not so much a direct result of temperature so much as the dynamics of airflow and the hydrocycle changing due to glacial melt. So if you wanted to start an ice age, and then end it, you might get the same effect. Otherwise it's not going anywhere.

And do we really want it to? Climates like this shape a large part of the surrounding area's conditions. You can't just make everywhere green without consequences. I think there are less destructive ways to feed Africa than altering millions of square miles of terrain to farmland. It would probably be cheaper just to ship in the soil for a load of vertical farms.

The reason farming on mars is being investigated is the same reason that any other space program exists. Leaving out any second-chance scenarios in case anything goes wrong, which for some reason incites resentment and 'better things to do' feelings from a lot of people, investing in science is vital if we want anything to be different fifty years from now. We can keep ramming our heads into the wall trying to fix the problems we have right now with the technology we have right now, or we can mix some of that with investigations into what works and what doesn't. Without the latter, we'd still be tilling farms by hand.

[10ebbor10]

Oh right. High temperatures => low pressure area. Ie, the ones that draw in storms. Could happen, but it won't go that far inland.

[Scoops Novel]

Given the tracts of land being bought in similarly impoverished locations, i doubt that such will result in much better quality of life for those who live there. On the other hand, yay staving of starvation, a bit, in some places.