Mixing vermicompost into the regolith seems a bit like cheating.
Yeah, we NEED to find a way to cheat, cheating is what will let us actually do any of this.
You need far less composting agents this way, you can add a little to a lot of moon soil to make it fertile enough for growth, and then once plants get started it will work towards making even more compost/soil.
[…] then once plants get started it will work towards making even more compost/soil.
Compost is biomaterial so it manly consists of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. The only part of that you can find on the moon is oxygen, so you can’t expand beyond the amount of air and biomass (manly food) you ship from earth.
You can also find hydrogen in the water at the poles. Nitrogen, yep, that’s a big one.
What would you propose, then?
We use organic amendments all the time when reclaiming historically mined lands that did not salvage soils.
Soils take millennia to form, and you’re not going to get fertile soils without either kickstarting the process or waiting.
Another commentator points out that using arbuscular mychorrizhal fungi is also cheating. Again, how?
To have a functional soil and not regolith you need the following:
- An organic matter source - regolith lacks this
- A moisture retaining media - regolith usually has this but its ability varies widely
- Enough rooting depth for your desired plants
- A method to transform organic matter to nutrients - regolith generally lacks this
Organic matter is your pool of nutrients and microbes and fungi are what mineralize this pool into plant available forms, so saying they are cheating doesnt hold water (like a shitty regolith).
But I can grow plants in glass beads! Sure you can, but you’re supplying chemical fertilizer to do it and constantly replacing that - so in this case you’re the organic matter pool and the transformation vector.
Hydroponics can grow plants too
Now all they need are some daal and rice
i cant wait to eat Lunar Falafel.
FINALLY, I mean come on it is embarassing it took them this long, we were all waiting don’t tell me you weren’t.
Did they poop in it?
That’s some great lunar regolith…
this looks familiar, whats it from…craig ferguson?
Moon curry when?
FFS… You can’t grow anything without an atmosphere.
FFS… you aren’t sending seeds up and sticking them in a vacuum in the powdered asphalt that is the moon’s surface, you are planting them in habitats for food and oxygen. Except that you can’t haul soil up with you. I mean, you could but it’s vastly expensive. If we have a way to use the “ground” that’s already up there, that’s a pretty big deal, because that shit is basically ground up glass.
No but it does mean we don’t need to ship up potting soil if a base were to be established.
Oh god, even in space there’s no escape from those bland awful little balls of mundanity. Surely it would be cheaper and less resource intensive for the astronauts to just roll up little balls of cardboard and eat them. The effect would be the same
No idea what you’re on about, chickpeas are GOAT. Tasty, full of good stuff for you, brings lots of vegetal protein, and, like, hummus??
Don’t forget our GOAT falafel!
Hummus is acceptable, if it’s got so much garlic in it that it burns
I bet this will be the cheapest protein available in space in the future.
