Growing plants on Mars

Disland · 2002-03-18 02:31:33

I think it would be good to bash out some ideas on actually growing food on Mars. There seems to be many problems with greenhouses on mars, not just what they would be made from, but whether they will actually work.
Water is a key concern. Where to get it from and the need to keep it from freezing are big worries. Recycling of waste water is a good source and maybe from ground ice but wherever you get it from it has to be kept warm. Solar water heater seem a good option for this, just like the domestic roof ones, anything to keep the stuff from freezing. Also you don't want to be growing rice for example there won't be an abundance of the stuff!
Another concern is the soil itself. I have doubts wether anything will grow in the Martian regolith. It has no organic matter and with no water table you would have to have isolated containers to keep the moisture in anayway. Again recycling of human waste could be a good source for soil, ESA have a experiment called 'Melissa' researching that. Another thing I have not heard mentioned much is worms. They are valuable in my compost heep at home, so at can't see that not being the case on a Mars base either. Once you have things growing, composters will provide a good amount of future soil.
Light is the other point. I believe Mars recieves only 44% the light that the Earth gets, so the right plants would have to be chosen that grow well with very little of it, unless you want to use power on extra lighting. Anyway...
Opinions and links on any of the above would be appreciated

Phobos · 2002-03-20 18:59:41

According to Zubrin's book, "The Case for Mars" the Martian
landscape is rife with the chemicals needed for plant life, so if his analysis pans out, we might not have to do a whole lot to the native regolith to prep it for plant life. I don't think it would be much of a problem keeping the agricultural areas warm provided the colony had a good power supply. They could just use "salamanders" to keep the plants from freezing. They're common devices used by construction crews to keep concrete warm in freezing weather so it can
cure properly. I imagine we could import chemical fertilizers from Earth until enough biomass has been developed that
a continuous cycle of fertilizing the soil can be undertaken.
Light seems to be the most tricky problem.

Disland · 2002-03-22 01:25:27

Phobos, the Salamanders seem an interesting solution, how much power would they require?

I think some sort of reflective surface on the ground of a dome (if that is the way to go, rather than in-hub hydroponics) could help increase the light to plants. If the light cannot be increase a great deal then it is down to plant selection or maybe genetic alteration to improve productivity.

With Nuke power though we could have loads of lights I guess, but I'm sure it would be too expensive, un-safe, heavy (lead lined) and politically challenging.

A few gardening links for those interested

ET Agriculture - Mars soil

Plants on Other Worlds

AltToWar · 2002-09-28 22:32:39

Has anyone considered Hydroponics for food proiduction on mars?

If you bring along fish, you can have somthing very close to a closed system, where the fish tank water provides the chemicals needed for the hydroponic operation.

noctis · 2002-09-29 12:38:31

i remember hearing something once about the advantages of small goats as a food source, obviously far less energy efficient than veggies, but maybe for special occasions?
apparentlythey have good conversion efficiency for mammals
and are not fussy about what they eat + do not take up much space, although i would think something like mealworms would be a better choice, insects generally have a higher proportion of usable protein by mass than mammals
in reality i think soya would suffice

dickbill · 2002-09-29 12:50:44

Hi,

As said previously, vegetables needs some organic soil before they can grow. However, it is possible to start from low level organism like photosynthetic bacteria,algae, fungus and symbiotic associations like lichens which do not requires organic matter and huge amount of water and light.
It's a primitive ecosystem which needs to be settle down first before it can accomodate higher level vegetals. It is out of question to grow tomatoes straigh from the regolith. Symbiotic association of primitive organisms such as algae + fungus (lichen) , photosynthetic bacteria + eucaryotes (corals) etc, have a synergistic effect. Very often, the symbiotic association can adapt to rougher conditions than a single isolated micro-organism could tolerate. In short, Biodiversity is the solution. We could have unexpected associations of those primitive organism viable on partially milded martian conditions, thanks to the millions of possible combinations of such symbiots and to the natural selection process.
Don't forget the virus/bacteriophages in your imported starter soil. Virus accelerate the genetic adaptation of the different microorganism present in the starter soil through DNA shuffle between different species. Then come the worms, then the insects and finally the tomatoes and the beans.

How to set up this primitive ecosystem on Mars, import the terran microorganism ecosystem ? put it on Mars and wait there until it adapts ? A better way is to do it on Earth, start from a known ecosystems in an isolated barometric chamber with a normal soil and slowly, very slowly, shift the conditions to temperature, pressure, gaz and soil composition to milded martian conditions. The key is to go slow to allow the genetic adaptation and natural selection to drive the biological evolution.
I warn against the tentation to start only from "cold, rough" ecosystems, such as antartic living ecosystems or lake vostok, toundra lichen etc, and disregard the tropical microorganisms.
On the long term, those initially tropicaly adapted ecosystems might have a better potential to martian conditions in this evolution driven experiment than an ecosystem picked up from the artic toundra. The reason is that natural selection plus random variation and genetic shuffling is by far too imprevisible and too complex and thus cannot be predicted. The combinations possibilities are billions of billions, much more than by just using transgenic plants.

Here is the analogy for those of you aquarist: when you want to set up a new sea or fresh water tank, a good way is to start from the soil from another healthy tank and then put the fishes into the new tank once it is stable. The bigger the tank, the longer it is to set up and to reach its equilibrium, you have to go slow. Aquarist know that. Mars is the tank, empty. We are the fishes. We put ourselves inside the tank and have to set up our own environment.
I am confident that such a primitive ecosystem could be created and ready to use in martian conditions such as a green house located at the martian equator, using martian regolith and no additional light at a slightly above freezing temperature.

AltToWar · 2002-09-29 19:03:10

Hi,
As said previously, vegetables needs some organic soil before they can grow. However, it is possible to start from low level organism like photosynthetic bacteria,algae, fungus and symbiotic associations like lichens which do not requires organic matter and huge amount of water and light.
It's a primitive ecosystem which needs to be settle down first before it can accomodate higher level vegetals. It is out of question to grow tomatoes straigh from the regolith. Symbiotic association of primitive organisms such as algae + fungus (lichen) , photosynthetic bacteria + eucaryotes (corals) etc, have a synergistic effect. Very often, the symbiotic association can adapt to rougher conditions than a single isolated micro-organism could tolerate. In short, Biodiversity is the solution. We could have unexpected associations of those primitive organism viable on partially milded martian conditions, thanks to the millions of possible combinations of such symbiots and to the natural selection process.
Don't forget the virus/bacteriophages in your imported starter soil. Virus accelerate the genetic adaptation of the different microorganism present in the starter soil through DNA shuffle between different species. Then come the worms, then the insects and finally the tomatoes and the beans.
How to set up this primitive ecosystem on Mars, import the terran microorganism ecosystem ? put it on Mars and wait there until it adapts ? A better way is to do it on Earth, start from a known ecosystems in an isolated barometric chamber with a normal soil and slowly, very slowly, shift the conditions to temperature, pressure, gaz and soil composition to milded martian conditions. The key is to go slow to allow the genetic adaptation and natural selection to drive the biological evolution.
I warn against the tentation to start only from "cold, rough" ecosystems, such as antartic living ecosystems or lake vostok, toundra lichen etc, and disregard the tropical microorganisms.
On the long term, those initially tropicaly adapted ecosystems might have a better potential to martian conditions in this evolution driven experiment than an ecosystem picked up from the artic toundra. The reason is that natural selection plus random variation and genetic shuffling is by far too imprevisible and too complex and thus cannot be predicted. The combinations possibilities are billions of billions, much more than by just using transgenic plants.
Here is the analogy for those of you aquarist: when you want to set up a new sea or fresh water tank, a good way is to start from the soil from another healthy tank and then put the fishes into the new tank once it is stable. The bigger the tank, the longer it is to set up and to reach its equilibrium, you have to go slow. Aquarist know that. Mars is the tank, empty. We are the fishes. We put ourselves inside the tank and have to set up our own environment.
I am confident that such a primitive ecosystem could be created and ready to use in martian conditions such as a green house located at the martian equator, using martian regolith and no additional light at a slightly above freezing temperature.

Plants can be grown in a small amount of recycled water, or with just mists of air sprayed onto it's roots.

The neutrants that are provided by the micro-organisms can be chemicly harvested from the air and regolith, grown in cultures, or provided by biomass.

Though transplanting an entire ecosystem would be a nice way to go, I doubt we could fit one onto the back of a saturn rocket

Number04 · 2002-09-30 13:31:52

okokok,

so dickbill, if i hear you right, you want to make a eco-soup here on earth to take to mars?

sounds good to me. But what is the differce from doing that then just taking fertilizer or compost with us?

but the idea of taking worms or fish aswell to creat a self contained system is a good idea. That should be a #1 priority, and something that we can acctual do (we being you and me in our basements.)

Bill White · 2002-09-30 14:04:37

Here is a new link I just discovered yesterday - terra preta - this stuff appears to be ultra-nutritious soil allowing plant nutrients to be bio-available and which replenishes itself readily from compost and other inputs. A web of interlocking micro-organisms appear to be the key to this soil bio-system.

Terra Preta (do indio) is a black earth-like anthropogenic soil with enhanced fertility due to high levels of soil organic matter (SOM) and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium embedded in a landscape of infertile soils (see soil profiles below). Terra Preta soils occur in small patches averaging 20 ha, but 350 ha sites have also been reported. These partly over 2000 years old man made soils occur in the Brazilian Amazon basin and other regions of South America such as Ecuador and Peru but also in Western Africa (Benin, Liberia) and in the savannas of South Africa. Terra Preta soils are very popularby the local farmers and are used especially to produce cash crops such as papaya and mango, which grow about three times as rapid as on surrounding infertile soils.

Ancient native peoples appear to have terra-formed :0 the otherwise poor soils of the Amazon basin.

= = =

There are further references to terra preta in the March 2002 edition of Atlantic magazine. Here is a brief quote from a much longer Atlantic article "1491"

"Landscape" in this case is meant exactly?Amazonian Indians literally created the ground beneath their feet. According to William I. Woods, a soil geographer at Southern Illinois University, ecologists' claims about terrible Amazonian land were based on very little data. In the late 1990s Woods and others began careful measurements in the lower Amazon. They indeed found lots of inhospitable terrain. But they also discovered swaths of terra preta?rich, fertile "black earth" that anthropologists increasingly believe was created by human beings.
Terra preta, Woods guesses, covers at least 10 percent of Amazonia, an area the size of France. It has amazing properties, he says. Tropical rain doesn't leach nutrients from terra preta fields; instead the soil, so to speak, fights back. Not far from Painted Rock Cave is a 300-acre area with a two-foot layer of terra preta quarried by locals for potting soil. The bottom third of the layer is never removed, workers there explain, because over time it will re-create the original soil layer in its initial thickness. The reason, scientists suspect, is that terra preta is generated by a special suite of microorganisms that resists depletion. "Apparently," Woods and the Wisconsin geographer Joseph M. McCann argued in a presentation last summer, "at some threshold level ... dark earth attains the capacity to perpetuate?even regenerate itself?thus behaving more like a living 'super'-organism than an inert material."
In as yet unpublished research the archaeologists Eduardo Neves, of the University of S?o Paulo; Michael Heckenberger, of the University of Florida; and their colleagues examined terra preta in the upper Xingu, a huge southern tributary of the Amazon. Not all Xingu cultures left behind this living earth, they discovered. But the ones that did generated it rapidly?suggesting to Woods that terra preta was created deliberately. In a process reminiscent of dropping microorganism-rich starter into plain dough to create sourdough bread, Amazonian peoples, he believes, inoculated bad soil with a transforming bacterial charge. Not every group of Indians there did this, but quite a few did, and over an extended period of time.
When Woods told me this, I was so amazed that I almost dropped the phone. I ceased to be articulate for a moment and said things like "wow" and "gosh." Woods chuckled at my reaction, probably because he understood what was passing through my mind. Faced with an ecological problem, I was thinking, the Indians fixed it. They were in the process of terraforming the Amazon when Columbus showed up and ruined everything.
Scientists should study the microorganisms in terra preta, Woods told me, to find out how they work. If that could be learned, maybe some version of Amazonian dark earth could be used to improve the vast expanses of bad soil that cripple agriculture in Africa?a final gift from the people who brought us tomatoes, corn, and the immense grasslands of the Great Plains.

Sounds interesting, no?

= = =

Additional summary - stable and fertile soil. . .

In the Brazilian Amazon basin there are small spots of sustainable and very fertile anthropogenic black earth soils of precolumbian origin (Terra Preta do Indio) within the typical rather infertile Oxisol landscape.The Terra Preta soils are characterized by a higher cation exchange capacity, higher phosphorus levels and a higher content of soil organic matter (SOM). The accumulation of organic matter in soils of the humid tropics seems quite paradox because of the optimum conditions of degradation.
There is evidence that Black Carbon (BC) is decisive for sustainability of these Terra Preta soils. To prove this hypothesis we developed a method based on marker substances exclusively derived from charring. We used benzene polycarboxylic acids (BPCA) as specific indicators for burning. After oxidation with nitric acid, extraction from soil, adequate sample cleanup and derivatization, BPCA were identified and quantified with gas liquid chromatography and flame ionization detection.
We show that the stablility of SOM in Terra Preta soils derives to a large extent from residues of incomplete combustion of organic material. Slow oxidation of BC creates carboxylic groups which increase the cation exchange capacity and therefore the soil fertility.

dickbill · 2002-10-01 17:53:18

Hi, Number_04

"But what is the differce from doing that then just taking fertilizer or compost with us? "

It's fine to take fertilizer but the problem is the mass, impossible to carry 500 tons of soil to make the biomass needed to feed a colony of just 10 people. On the other side, "ready to use" microorganism which could grow on poor martian regoltith would slowly but surely constitute this biomass.
To come back to the aquarist tank example, you can inoculate a really big tank with just a handful of sand from another running and healthy tank, containing millions of different microorganisms, worms copepods etc, but already adapted to the life in a tank. Some grams are enough.
As no known organism can survive on Mars and cannot be used as such an innoculatum in Mars, I simply suggest to create a Martian-like ecosystem by using an enclosed pressurized chamber here on earth. Introduce first in that chamber a little bit of living soil, in its normal conditions and then slowly, shift to Mars analog physical and chemical conditions.
Some points here:
1) As I said before, do not start necesseraly from artic or antartic soil, it is not obvious that they can adapt/evolve to Mars conditions better than a tropical or marine soil. I known that it is counterintuitive, but I can argue on that point latter if needed.
2) Go slowly, that's the key to success. (like for marine tank, ecosystems that go slowly go safely). The change or shift to martian conditions could need years ! we are not in a hurry anyway. In this enclosed chamber/ecosystem, wait until the system is stable before to do any change. And increase the biodiversity as much as possible before to shift to Martian conditions. Go slowly, for example remove 1% of initial soil and replace it by a reconstituted martian-like regolith every two month. Same for temperature, UV irradiations, light intensity and atmosphere composition. Do not change everything in the same time, i.e decrease the light, add oxydized regolith, remove air from the chamber. At critical points when everything seems to die or starved, stop the shift or go back slowly, wait more before the next shift.
Obviously, this forced ecosystem could take several years to adapt. We could help a bit, by introducing some vector plasmids or virus to shuffle the genetic pool of the ecosystem at the time of the shift at which the microorganisms feel the stress and try to adapt to the new conditions by integrating new DNAs. That phenomenon has been observed in bacteria: when the environnemnt is changing, the DNA replication machinery of the bacteria is "volontarly" imprecise, which increases the mutation and variation rate and can accpept foreign DNA more easily, through a phage or an episome. Those otherwise genetically stable bacterias now mutate at higher rate until the environnmental conditions are stabilized and then, their replication system locks again.

Simple barometric chambers that divers use to recompress could be used, sampled and maintained automatically so that the overall price of the experiment would not be astronomic.

At the end we could have an ecosystem of bacteria, phages algae and fungus and primitive plants able to survive in conditions very close to Mars, without any addition of fertilizers, with maybe just a temperature close to the freezing point. A temperature at 0 degree celsius would require a tented crater or some grounded system to heat locally the permafrost, or alternatively, a microorganism secreting a natural transparent glucoproteic coat acting like a protection/greenhouse for the other microorganisms. Who knows what evolution could invent ?

Then our inoculum, once on Mars, can potentially transform tons of Mars regolith, providing the biomass that we need to sustain the higher vegetals and our small colony.
As opposed to a fish farm, that system would run in low energy input, no water input, no light input and would still be able to continue to adapt on its own to martian conditions.

In my opinion, starting food production on Mars from higher ecosystem (fish farm, hydroponic etc) would be a mistake. Their is no biodiversity and no buffering systems, no back up possible. Inevitably such an industrial farm production would succumb soon or later to a virus or an internal desequilibrium. We need to set up the food chain from the very beginning, from the regolith and with an ecosystem almost independant of human activities.

bye

AltToWar · 2002-10-01 18:33:09

In my opinion, starting food production on Mars from higher ecosystem (fish farm, hydroponic etc) would be a mistake. Their is no biodiversity and no buffering systems, no back up possible. Inevitably such an industrial farm production would succumb soon or later to a virus or an internal desequilibrium. We need to set up the food chain from the very beginning, from the regolith and with an ecosystem almost independant of human activities.
bye

If you want to start human sustaining food production from the day you land on mars, your not going to get it from growing stuff in martian dirt.

It may take several years to take martian regolith and transform it into somthing plants can grow in. It may take several more years to find ways to mass produce it.

Though I do believe this would be a very worthwhile endevor, it is a long term solution to a immediate problem.

Hydroponics have been in operation successfully on earth for centuries. It can be started immediately on landing, and there are several options for getting the chemicals needed from the martian environment.

RobertDyck · 2002-10-01 23:52:30

I did come up with a scheme to produce starch or sugar as a by-product of recycling oxygen. Electrolysis produces oxygen with hydrogen gas as its waste product, and carbon dioxide is simply dumped. That is the system currently on ISS, but it recycles only half the oxygen astronauts breathe. Water has to be shipped up to feed the electrolysis tank to produce enough oxygen. Adding a Sabatier reactor would convert the hydrogen and half the carbon dioxide into methane and water. That water would be enough to feed the electrolysis tank, so all oxygen breathed by astronauts would be recycled. The waste product of that system is methane and carbon dioxide gasses, both of which have to be dumped in space.

This alternative I am talking about is a biochemical device that may be described as biotech. It produces either sugar or starch instead of gasses. The starch could be fed to a fermentation tank where yeast would convert some into protein. Raw potatoes contain 78% water, 18% starch, 2.2% protein, 1% ash, and 0.1% fat. Yeast in starch can add protein to the same level as potatoes. The result would have the consistency of pudding and no taste at all. The Hawaiian food poi is made from Taro root. It has the same consistency and lack of flavour. You could consider this a synthetic form of poi.

The only caution is to select yeast that does not produce alcohol; most yeast does. The alcohol can easily be boiled off by cooking, but you have to be careful inside a sealed habitat. You don't want alcohol condensing inside electronics. The steam could be captured and temperature fractionated from water to ensure all water is recycled. Such a device is normally called a 'still, and alcohol produced from distilling fermented starchy food is normally called vodka. Somehow I don't see NASA planners accepting that. Yeast used for non-alcoholic beer should solve that problem.

As for growing hydroponics, there are several people conducting hydroponic experiments today. A couple are Mars Society members. Hydroponics do not rely on Mars soil, they use water and processed nutrients dissolved in that water. It does take some attention to maintain the nutrient balance, but it does work.

Processing Mars regolith into a fertile soil is possible. The problem right now is determining exactly what is there. Data from Mars right now is inconclusive. It appears there is some clay, and a great deal of feldspar. There is also a great deal of iron, but that may be tied up in minerals such as augite, chromite, bronzite, and olivine. There is almost no carbon or nitrogen in the soil, but nitrogen fixing plants can create nitrites and nitrates from nitrogen in the air. All plants fix carbon, they create organic matter from carbon dioxide, but higher plants requires some organic carbon compounds in the soil. This can be added with primitive plants. Pre-processing treatments can speed soil preparation; such as like soaking with water to neutralize super oxides, or bubbling carbon dioxide through the water to create carbonic acid to neutralize the alkali. It shouldn't take long to prepare fertile soil.

Greenhouse atmosphere can be created by pressurizing with Martian atmosphere, extracting carbon dioxide and pumping that out, and increasing oxygen content by capturing oxygen released by neutralizing super oxides. Depending on how much oxygen is released from the soil, and assuming 95% of the carbon dioxide and 80% of the carbon monoxide from Mars atmosphere is removed, the result should be about 45.3% nitrogen, 26.8% argon, 22.3% oxygen, 2.26% carbon dioxide, and 0.23% carbon monoxide. At only 5psi pressure that may not be enough for humans to breathe, but it should be suitable for plants.

turbo · 2002-10-02 11:07:47

I did come up with a scheme to produce starch or sugar as a by-product of recycling oxygen. Electrolysis produces oxygen with hydrogen gas as its waste product, and carbon dioxide is simply dumped. That is the system currently on ISS, but it recycles only half the oxygen astronauts breathe. Water has to be shipped up to feed the electrolysis tank to produce enough oxygen. Adding a Sabatier reactor would convert the hydrogen and half the carbon dioxide into methane and water. That water would be enough to feed the electrolysis tank, so all oxygen breathed by astronauts would be recycled. The waste product of that system is methane and carbon dioxide gasses, both of which have to be dumped in space.
This alternative I am talking about is a biochemical device that may be described as biotech. It produces either sugar or starch instead of gasses. The starch could be fed to a fermentation tank where yeast would convert some into protein. Raw potatoes contain 78% water, 18% starch, 2.2% protein, 1% ash, and 0.1% fat. Yeast in starch can add protein to the same level as potatoes. The result would have the consistency of pudding and no taste at all. The Hawaiian food poi is made from Taro root. It has the same consistency and lack of flavour. You could consider this a synthetic form of poi.
The only caution is to select yeast that does not produce alcohol; most yeast does. The alcohol can easily be boiled off by cooking, but you have to be careful inside a sealed habitat. You don't want alcohol condensing inside electronics. The steam could be captured and temperature fractionated from water to ensure all water is recycled. Such a device is normally called a 'still, and alcohol produced from distilling fermented starchy food is normally called vodka. Somehow I don't see NASA planners accepting that. Yeast used for non-alcoholic beer should solve that problem.
As for growing hydroponics, there are several people conducting hydroponic experiments today. A couple are Mars Society members. Hydroponics do not rely on Mars soil, they use water and processed nutrients dissolved in that water. It does take some attention to maintain the nutrient balance, but it does work.
Processing Mars regolith into a fertile soil is possible. The problem right now is determining exactly what is there. Data from Mars right now is inconclusive. It appears there is some clay, and a great deal of feldspar. There is also a great deal of iron, but that may be tied up in minerals such as augite, chromite, bronzite, and olivine. There is almost no carbon or nitrogen in the soil, but nitrogen fixing plants can create nitrites and nitrates from nitrogen in the air. All plants fix carbon, they create organic matter from carbon dioxide, but higher plants requires some organic carbon compounds in the soil. This can be added with primitive plants. Pre-processing treatments can speed soil preparation; such as like soaking with water to neutralize super oxides, or bubbling carbon dioxide through the water to create carbonic acid to neutralize the alkali. It shouldn't take long to prepare fertile soil.
Greenhouse atmosphere can be created by pressurizing with Martian atmosphere, extracting carbon dioxide and pumping that out, and increasing oxygen content by capturing oxygen released by neutralizing super oxides. Depending on how much oxygen is released from the soil, and assuming 95% of the carbon dioxide and 80% of the carbon monoxide from Mars atmosphere is removed, the result should be about 45.3% nitrogen, 26.8% argon, 22.3% oxygen, 2.26% carbon dioxide, and 0.23% carbon monoxide. At only 5psi pressure that may not be enough for humans to breathe, but it should be suitable for plants.

Okay, so maybe no "Stolichmarsya" or "Absolut-Extraterrestrial" for NASA. Then again, if the distilling process yields methanol and not ethanol, we win!!! NASA's own engineers put in the TechBriefs that they've found methanol for fuel cells yields hydrogen for less voltage than water electrolysis.

Now, since NASA has a major case of "space station fixation", I think I'm more interested in what ESA planners would think.

If I promise not to take a rover and then go paint crossed-eyeballs on the Cydonian "Face", you let me have the right tech available so when NASA finally does get to the colonies, they get greeted with vodka, corn whiskey, and beer.

Hmmm, a forced diet of fish, soy burgers, and probably some gritty form of "Vegemite." Add the enforced wearing of diapers on long EVA's, all the DVD's have been watched so much each line is memorized, and it takes eighteen months for the pizza delivery to show. Come on!, at least the colonists will be non-smokers!

If the "planners" forbid instant coffee, I shall the lead the mob. Forget the rope, I'll bring a nice sturdy tow strap!

I wonder what vices the ice eskimos have?
turbo

Bill White · 2002-10-02 16:49:37

Hydroponics have been in operation successfully on earth for centuries. It can be started immediately on landing, and there are several options for getting the chemicals needed from the martian environment.

IMHO - This is the heart of the issue.

First - soil production is ONLY for permanent settlements, NOT Mars Direct or other initial missions. Hydroponics will be the only way to go at first, if only to produce vegetable waste to later compost.

Second - assume we are seeking a quasi self-sufficient settlement. Where does the hydroponic solution come from?

We can ship large quantities of MiracleGro from Earth and mix with Martian water, but how self sufficient is that?

*IF* you know how to formulate MiracleGro or any other hydroponic solution from inorganic Mars regolith, I would be thrilled. I have my doubts about that however.

Third - nutrients need to be bio-available for plants to use.

Suppose my doctor says I need more iron. Eating filings isn't going to help. Planting tomato seeds in raw Mars regolith will be, IMHO, rather like a human eating iron filings rather than spinach, it won't work very well.

Fourth - what initially caught my eye about terra preta were two things - - (1) this soil is exceptionally good at making plant nutrients bio-available; and (2) this soil rejuvenates well, in other words, the nutrients conveyed to the plant root systems are readily replenished from compost or fertilizers.

Obviously, hydroponics works. But is it easier than planting seeds in a strong soil? Also, with soil fewer physical structures and less hand labor are necessary.

Fifth - terra preta appears to be an interlocking suite of micro-orgamisms which (like sourdough starter) colonizes poorer soils. Thus, if a permanent colony carefully added plant waste, select portions of processed human waste and treated regolith, over time more and more terra preta could be made without further imports from Earth.

Show me a cheap, effective, proven way to formulate large amounts of hydroponic solution from raw regolith and maybe we can forget about soil. But, the books I have on hydroponics say go to your local store and buy 100 gallons of high quality solution.

Does that come from 100% inorganic sources and does hydroponics deliver plant nutrients into the root systems more or less efficiently than soil?

Bill White · 2002-10-02 18:37:23

Another thought -

it seems to me that hydroponics would be brittle. Simple mistakes could more easily wreck the system while soil would be more robust, with more buffers and margins for error.

RobertDyck · 2002-10-02 23:35:54

Terry Kok is a member who is developing a system to compost human waste into liquid nutrients suitable for growing plants. He wants to develop a system that recycles human waste and does not include Mars regolith at all. He built a prototype attached to his house, the toilet fed into a greenhouse to grow vegetables. It worked until his marriage broke down and...

I prefer conditioning Mars regolith to create soil for all the same reasons you state, Bill. However, I would advocate a greenhouse for the first mission only as an experiment and suppliment to provide fresh produce. On-board systems should recycle air and water, and include packaged food for the entire trip. This is why I suggested using the high-efficiency water recycling system that the Johnson Space Center developed as part of their Advanced Life Support Project. They hope to achieve 97% water recycling closure from all sources. That should permit sending only dry and dehydrated food. The starch/yeast system could produce some food, reducing the mass of dehydrated food required.

RobertDyck · 2002-10-02 23:41:42

Turbo, don't worry. "Absolut-Extraterrestrial" may not be created on the first manned mission to Mars, but expect the first colonists to bring beer and whiskey yeast with them. For now we just have to emphasise how important it is to use yeast to produce protein for manufactured food enroute to Mars, and how we need to grow barley in the greenhouse for decent soy burgers. Once we get the raw materials to Mars, the colonists will do what they want with them.

Bill White · 2002-10-03 07:24:45

I prefer conditioning Mars regolith to create soil for all the same reasons you state, Bill. However, I would advocate a greenhouse for the first mission only as an experiment and suppliment to provide fresh produce. On-board systems should recycle air and water, and include packaged food for the entire trip. This is why I suggested using the high-efficiency water recycling system that the Johnson Space Center developed as part of their Advanced Life Support Project. They hope to achieve 97% water recycling closure from all sources. That should permit sending only dry and dehydrated food. The starch/yeast system could produce some food, reducing the mass of dehydrated food required.

No disagreement here.

Unless we have begun to implement a plan to establish a permanent, growing human presence on Mars, making soil is far more trouble than its worth. The first several missions cannot waste time or resources on soil, except perhaps for a few experiments ancillary to the primary mission objectives.

Soil is only appropriate when humans decide to plant permanent human roots on Mars.

Form follows function. If the goal is to limit the human presence on Mars to science only research stations, soil making may *never* be appropriate. In my opinion, however, a permanent growing population will need a more robust agriculture than hydroponics alone can provide.

The last few posts I saw from Terry suggest that he is seeking a perfectly balanced CELSS system which would not begin the micro-terraforming of Mars. He seemed opposed to a CELSS that generates a surplus of Terran organics. I do suspect such a system will prove far too brittle to be successfully operated for long and I am less concerned than he is, philosophically, about beginning to micro-terraform Mars.

If regolith is continually added to a growing seed stock of Terran soil and if Martian hydrogen and carbon are continually fixed into Terran organics, terra-forming has begun, at least on a small scale, whether or not we ever orbit giant mirrors or attempt other engineering marvels.

For permanent settlement, I believe the most elemental question is how to make Martian elements - carbon, hydrogen and the others - "bio-available" for human consumption. As human numbers increase over time, Mars will be terra-formed, by the most humble biological processes, even if humans never walk on the surface in the open air or attempt other feats of planetary engineering.

AltToWar · 2002-10-03 16:29:49

Hydroponics have been in operation successfully on earth for centuries. It can be started immediately on landing, and there are several options for getting the chemicals needed from the martian environment.
IMHO - This is the heart of the issue.
First - soil production is ONLY for permanent settlements, NOT Mars Direct or other initial missions. Hydroponics will be the only way to go at first, if only to produce vegetable waste to later compost.
Second - assume we are seeking a quasi self-sufficient settlement. Where does the hydroponic solution come from?
We can ship large quantities of MiracleGro from Earth and mix with Martian water, but how self sufficient is that?
*IF* you know how to formulate MiracleGro or any other hydroponic solution from inorganic Mars regolith, I would be thrilled. I have my doubts about that however.
Third - nutrients need to be bio-available for plants to use.
Suppose my doctor says I need more iron. Eating filings isn't going to help. Planting tomato seeds in raw Mars regolith will be, IMHO, rather like a human eating iron filings rather than spinach, it won't work very well.
Fourth - what initially caught my eye about terra preta were two things - - (1) this soil is exceptionally good at making plant nutrients bio-available; and (2) this soil rejuvenates well, in other words, the nutrients conveyed to the plant root systems are readily replenished from compost or fertilizers.
Obviously, hydroponics works. But is it easier than planting seeds in a strong soil? Also, with soil fewer physical structures and less hand labor are necessary.
Fifth - terra preta appears to be an interlocking suite of micro-orgamisms which (like sourdough starter) colonizes poorer soils. Thus, if a permanent colony carefully added plant waste, select portions of processed human waste and treated regolith, over time more and more terra preta could be made without further imports from Earth.
Show me a cheap, effective, proven way to formulate large amounts of hydroponic solution from raw regolith and maybe we can forget about soil. But, the books I have on hydroponics say go to your local store and buy 100 gallons of high quality solution.
Does that come from 100% inorganic sources and does hydroponics deliver plant nutrients into the root systems more or less efficiently than soil?

>"soil production is ONLY for permanent settlements, NOT Mars Direct or other initial missions. Hydroponics will be the only way to go at first, if only to produce vegetable waste to later compost."

we agree there. In fact if your just staying temporarily, you could probably bring the bulk of your food.

>"Second - assume we are seeking a quasi self-sufficient settlement. Where does the hydroponic solution come from?

We can ship large quantities of MiracleGro from Earth and mix with Martian water, but how self sufficient is that?

*IF* you know how to formulate MiracleGro or any other hydroponic solution from inorganic Mars regolith, I would be thrilled. I have my doubts about that however."

Most of the chemicals needed can and will be produced as by-products of the chemical plants that will produce our Oxygen, Nitrogen, Water and Feul from the air and ground. In addition many of the elements needed can be gotten as byproducts from other natural means like composting waiste materials or from fish poo.

The big sticky widget is nitrogen. Nitrogen is preatty scarce in mars. But that sticky widget applies to all forms of mars plant growth, not just hydroponics.

>"Fifth - terra preta appears to be an interlocking suite of micro-orgamisms which (like sourdough starter) colonizes poorer soils. Thus, if a permanent colony carefully added plant waste, select portions of processed human waste and treated regolith, over time more and more terra preta could be made without further imports from Earth. "

It's one thing to take a colony of microorganisms and set them in motion into a base that they evolved over millions of years to flourish in, and another to throw them into de-thawed martian regolith.

It would be like taking a few gold fish and throwing it into a bucket of pine-sol and expect it to breed.

Making regolith into nice healthy soil is not going to be an easy task. Like I said there is a good chance it may take a generation to pull it off in the mass quantities needed for a growing population.

>"Show me a cheap, effective, proven way to formulate large amounts of hydroponic solution from raw regolith and maybe we can forget about soil. But, the books I have on hydroponics say go to your local store and buy 100 gallons of high quality solution. "

I'm not saying forget soil. Im saying don't discount hydroponincs.

In general most hydroponic farmers are looking for higher yeild from each plant to offset the cost of the operation. That is why in hydroponic liturature you see so much talk about exact chemical balances and ph levels and such.

But experiments in gradeschool classes all over the world have proven that hydroponics can work just dandy in much less than perfect conditions. It's just the nature of the hydroponics industry to not just grow tomato plants but super-high-yeald tomato plants, and such.

>"Does that come from 100% inorganic sources and does hydroponics deliver plant nutrients into the root systems more or less efficiently than soil?"

Hydoponics has been proven to consistantly produce higher yeild plants than plants grown in average soil. You can also grow the plants in a smaller volume of space. More food per plant. More plants per square foot.

As for Hydroponics Fragility, sence it is a human construction it is subject to human error. Dispite the common perception, there is a good margin for error in the nutrient makeup, your plants just wont yeild as much as they could.

I would be much more worried about the organic makeup of synthetic soil myself. Topsoil is a living breathing thing, it is possible in a closed environment that the whole system collapses. One microbe might die causing a chain of collapses, or another microbe might become over abundant and poison other organisms.

Making sythetic soil from the martian regolith I think is a very worthwhile endevor, I think that it is an untested and theoretical endevor until we get to mars and can try. It may be easy, but more likely it ill take a long succession of trial and error expariments involving introducing different groups of microbes and hoping for the best. Hydroponics is alredy a tried and true form of agriculture, and we can rely on it from the day the colony lands.

Bill White · 2002-10-03 17:17:36

I'm not saying forget soil. Im saying don't discount hydroponincs.

I have no quarrel with this especially since I am far from qualified to make a *final* judgment anyways.

Maybe early settlers just try both and see which works better.

In any event, since hydroponic plants will produce inedible stems, leaves etc. . . starting a soil project with plover compost means we do not need to go either/or. . . and we do not need to simply discard some valuable organics just because people cannot eat them.

Start with 100 or 500 or 1000 pounds of potting soil and add compost and very limited amounts of regolith and carefully processed human waste and see where you can go. Segregated soil batches may be a good idea as well.

Finally, understanding how soil works will benefit all of us, however we choose we go.

Adrian · 2002-10-05 04:12:34

There's an interesting article in Wired about a UK company developing computer controlled, hermetically sealed greenhouses with high CO2 levels - apparently this can drastically reduce crop growing times and all sorts of wondrous things. Considering that any Martian farm will be hermetically sealed and have high CO2 levels (if the designers have any sense) then this may be a sign of things to come on Mars. Well, you'd need to get the soil from somewhere, of course, and there'd be less light, but still...

Shaun Barrett · 2002-10-06 00:22:45

Didn't they grow perfectly healthy tomatoes in lunar regolith back in the 70s?
:0

AltToWar · 2002-10-06 15:43:24

Didn't they grow perfectly healthy tomatoes in lunar regolith back in the 70s?
:0

Adding fertleizer to inert medium does not make it soil.

Bill White · 2002-10-07 15:35:40

Didn't they grow perfectly healthy tomatoes in lunar regolith back in the 70s?

The mission critical goal is achieved when plant roots absorb proper nutrition. Different growing media allow nutrient uptake at different rates, but in general, the faster the better.

The question becomes how to best deliver plant nutrients to growing plants in a bio-available form. Adrian's post about GreenGro confirms that hydroponics includes feeding plants by adding hydroponic growth solution to non-soil media such as peat, gravel or regolith.

But, that still begs the question about where the hydroponic solution comes from.

To my mind, soil is merely a means to convert compost and other waste into bio-available plant nutrition. If we can accomplish that more efficiently another way, no objection here. Sabatiers produce rocket fuel - no problem. I have yet to see a demonstration that mechanical chemical processing can formulate useful plant food from inorganic regolith or human and plant waste, but maybe I am missing something.

Adrian's GreenGro link further points out that since hydroponic farms are largely sterile, this creates a great opportunity for opportunistic bacteria to grow. If we start with healthy soil, teeming with useful bacteria, maybe we can close out the available niches for undesirable bacteria.

Yet another category of pitfalls yet to be analyzed and resolved before any permanent settlement can be established.

For MarsOne, by the way, sterile may well be better. For any permanent Mars settlement, sterile is likely a most dangerous fantasy.

Josh Cryer · 2002-10-07 23:17:35

Well, plants only ?eat? inorganic stuff. This is why I pointed out in the ?Martian Dead? thread, that using dead people as compost is totally absurd. We'd be better off using a dead persons biomass as food.

Hydroponics (let's not forget aeroponics! ) is basically the art of feeding plants the inorganic chemicals they need (mostly nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon). You can't grow plants (as far as I know) without nitrogen. It doesn't matter what system you use, plants need nitrogen. So the question really is, ?Is it easier to grow plants using complex soil and certain biomass along with lots of bacteria, or is it easier to use raw chemicals in the right ammounts (with some help from bacteria)??

I personally think it would be easier and more efficient to use raw chemicals on Mars. If you look at a Generic Hydroculture Solution, it's not hard to imagine finding phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and sulfur on Mars. In fact, of the chemicals I just listed, all of them are in the Martian regolith. The only thing we have to bring is nitrogen (and we're going to be bringing nitrogen either way).

Check out the rest of that site, though. It does give you some insight as to why hydroponics are better: http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/hydro/makhydro.htm

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