|
|
Many people were involved in a fairly ambitious effort to incorporate plants
into the life support systems in order to be used for food, oxygen, and
water recovery. Everything at JSC, KSC, and several universities was ground
based because of the size and complex nature of the equipment. It was our
dream to grow tomatoes on the moon but new programs and competation for
funding has pushed the technology development efforts for plant growth in
space to the back. Only very small experiments like the Arabidopsis
experiments are all that is left. It will be a long time before real fruit
and vegetables are grown on the space station unless an astronaut takes some
seeds in his pocket.
Keith Henderson
"John Doe" <jdoe@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:44A1DEB7.7B1ACD80@xxxxxxxxxx
> baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> "Arabidopsis thaliana is a common weed, which we've found in our
>> parking lots," said Mike Eodice, the experiment's project manager at
>> NASA Ames Research Center,
>
>
> At the point of the station's life, they should have gone way beyond
> groing a weed and should have had regular production of vegetables on
> the station. It is about time they start this research. This is way
> overdue and I hope they quickly move from growing useless weeds to
> growing real fruits/vegetables.
>
> Heck, growing tomatoes in space should have been done years ago to study
> the effects of 0G on plants and fruits.
>
> And BTW, I can just see the headlines in the media: "Astronauts grow
> weed in space".
|
|