NASA Is Trying to Grow Potatoes on Mars | Hacker News Reader

NASA Is Trying to Grow Potatoes on Mars

wsj.com

132 pointsT-A65 comments

One of the meaningful bits of engineering one can do on Earth for furthering Martian agriculture, is the recycling of water. It's going to cost energy and worker-time to extract water out of the soil. Even machinery that condenses water out of the Martian air will require energy and maintenance. (Possibly passive structures that condense water?)

For this reason, we may want to research habitats that can almost completely retain moisture in the form of water vapor and extract it out of the air. Such requirements are quite uncommon for structures on Earth, doubly so if you also add in the requirements of enclosing useful agricultural acreage and pressurization. Submarines are probably good at doing this, but the price per square meter of floor would be prohibitive. We'd want to be able to build such structures on Mars from in-situ resources.

Building such structures on Earth and growing crops like potatoes within them would constitute worthwhile research in preparation of colonizing Mars.

(One side effect of such research might be the ability to settle and develop land in places like West Texas, much of which gets very little rain and has land that sells at single-digit dollar prices.)

If you haven't yet, listen to one of the recent episodes of Star Talk Radio (Season 7, Episodes 4). They have Any Weir, author of "The Martian", and Dr. Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. Dr. Green describes how they now think extracting water from the Martian soil may be as simple as heating up soil. Supposedly, the Martian soil contains roughly 35 liters of water for every cubic meter of soil.

From "The Martian":

> Fortunately, I have water. But not as much as I want. To be viable, soil needs 40 liters of water per cubic meter. My overall plan calls for 9.2 cubic meters of soil. So I’ll eventually need 368 liters of water to feed it.

> The Hab has an excellent Water Reclaimer. Best technology available on Earth. So NASA figured “why send a lot of water up there? Just send enough for an emergency.” Humans need 3 liters of water per day to be comfortable. They gave us 50 liters each. There are 300 liters total in the Hab.

So if the soil already has 35 liters per cubic meter, he would have actually needed just 46 liters of additional water and wouldn't have needed to muck about with hydrazine.

Its my understanding that the moisture content of martian soil was not know when the book was written.

There is more moisture and water ice found rather recently than we had previously estimated.

Oh, I know that, and I love the book and movie, I just thought that it was ironic that it was a talk with Andy Weir.

As science progresses, he could in fact publish new editions of "The Martian" with the relevant stuff corrected, a la Ridley Scott's numerous editions of Blade Runner, or, God forbid, Lucas' editions of Star Wars.

I was thinking precisely about this technique. That's still going to take labor and energy to accomplish, both of which are scarce.

Labor from machines and energy from the Sun. Seems imminently doable with the tech of today.

The machines and the devices to gather that energy are going to have to be brought from Earth. Sure, it's eminently doable. We'll have to see what's most economical at first, in context.

But what if I told you that there were creatures and plants there that literally excreted locally high concentrations of water? Wouldn't we be champing at the bit to extract that water? What if I also told you that those creatures and plants carry no contamination/ecological worries, because they're humans and their crops?

Most of the water at the ISS is already recycled, but they still do need periodic refills. Something like it would also work on Mars, but as far as I know the system is quite big, complex and expensive.

> Submarines are probably good at doing this, but the price per square meter of floor would be prohibitive.

Nuclear submarines produce clean water from sea water as an intentional byproduct.

I was specifically referring to the environmental controls. There are dehumidifiers onboard that can extract water from the air.

> [P]laces like West Texas, much of which gets very little rain and has land that sells at single-digit dollar prices.

This is interesting - do you have any links to land like that being sold at such cheap prices?

Not quite that cheap, but I found land at $89/acre in west Texas in about 2 minutes of searching. The price likely drops rapidly if you want 1,000 acres or more.

http://www.landwatch.com/Hudspeth-County-Texas-Land-for-sale...

Wasn't this part of what the "Biosphere 2" project was about: producing a self-contained ecosystem on Earth in order to demonstrate that it might be possible off-earth?

And there's lettuce growing on the ISS as another aspect of this research.

On one level, it was an ecological failure. And even that building had retention on the order of 90% per month. Better would be better.

Better would be better

You could say that about a lot of things :)

If you have to bring your water and air with you, how would you feel about losing 10% of it every month?

An interesting piece of trivia, while potatoes are in cuisine across the world now, they are native to the Americas (which is briefly mentioned in the article). It's ability to feed many (being caloricly dense), as well as being fairly rugged allowed it to create Europe's population boom and urbanization when it was introduced there. Let's hope the same can be done to Mars!

However in many places people were unsure if they were fit for human consumption! For instance the Paris Faculty of Medicine only declared them edible in 1772 mainly by the efforts of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.

He did publicity stunts such as potato dinners featuring honorable gusts like Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, or (my favorite) surrounding his potato garden with lots of guards... only to instruct them to accept any bribe and be extra sloppy guarding the garden, allowing interested villagers to "steal" the potatoes.

Frederick the Great's "potato marketing" is a pretty great story. He was convinced the potato would help grow and nourish the population so he tried to enact it as "people food" via law. The people did not take to it. He then devised the genius plan of having potato fields guarded by soldiers who were secretly told to take naps and/or sleep at night and let people steal the potatoes. People being people some citizens figured it must be valuable and great stuff if it's guarded and the "hot new food of kings" spread pretty quickly.

There's usually potatoes on his grave to this day :)

Bribable guards. What a genius marketing campaign!

> It's ability to feed many (being caloricly dense), as well as being fairly rugged allowed it to create Europe's population boom and urbanization when it was introduced there

But don't forget to mention that Potato issues have caused massive immigration from Ireland in History (resulting in a large influx of Irish folks to North America):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

True but let's not put all the blame on the potato. During the Famine years Ireland was a net exporter of food...

And the irish reliance on potato was directly caused by the english Penal Laws under which until the late 18th century catholics were forbidden many thing[0], including getting an education, purchasing land, long land leases (more than 31 years), primogeniture (catholic land had to be equally divided between all sons unless the eldest converted to protestantism, which would quickly lead to fragmentation and plots too small to feed their owner… which could then only be bought by protestant absentee landlords since other catholics were barred from buying them, you can see its success in irish catholic holdings falling from 25% of Ireland in 1688 to 5% in 1776).

The Penal Laws were indeed

> a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.

[0] you can hear the evil cackling in the background as you go down the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_(Ireland)#Ascendanc...

But was it food that could have fed the population or luxury food (spices, cacao or something like coffee beans) ?

No it was your typical farm food (cattle, grain etc.). Most of these shipments were under armed guard by British soldiers. There was no shortage of food. Whilst the famine itself was devastating, the results were politically motivated and driven.

Grains and other edible crops (peas, onions), livestock, processed meat and produce (between January 1847 and September 1847, Ireland exported more than 7 million pounds of butter).

It was food that could have fed the population. In particular corn/wheat/other grains.

Are you familiar with (a) the climate of Ireland in the 19th century and (b) the growing conditions demanded by (most) spices, cacao, and coffee beans?

Yes, I am.

Then why would you have wondered if Ireland could have grown those things.

I did not. These were just typical examples to illustrate what I had in mind when asking about any homegrown Irish luxury food (I don't know if Ireland has any). Hence the « or something like coffee beans ».

Whereas some things are fairly straightforward to grow from their own last-crop seeds, resowing potatoes from some you already have often results in disease.

I grow a lot of different things in my backyard. From one lettuce, coriander, radish, pumpkin or tomato plant, I can collect loads and loads of seeds to regrow. In the case of a lettuce plant, it's thousands of seeds.

Potatoes are trivial to grow from old shrivelled supermarket stock (and sometimes scraps with the eyes intact) but 80+% of crops I've grown this way have been riddled internally with disease.

Pictures here: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=potato+disease&source=lnm...

Seed potatoes are so inexpensive, it's not worth using old potatoes (though I have done that many times).

I don't know where you live, but around here supermarkets will soon be selling 5lb bags of seed potatoes at comically low prices. It is ridiculously cheap to grow some staples: I can buy 100 onion sets for $2.00/bag at my local "pricy" feed store. Enough corn to plant an acre costs about $5, etc...

> As humans prepare to blast off to Mars, there is still the question of what they’ll eat once they colonize the red planet. Scientists who have traveled here to the Peruvian desert say they have the answer. Potatoes.

Followed by the Great Martian Potato Famine, and then signs in the windows of Earth businesses stating "No Martians."

Martians Need Not Apply

It would be ironic if something were to happen to us and potatoes became the life form that colonized space.

What's the irony here?

We tend to think of the human species landing on the moon as an isolated species achievement.

The human view of our future is usually of us colonizing space independently, not of us wanting to spread earthly life forms across the universe.

>Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit foundation, plans to send individuals to the planet in about 10 years on a one-way trip to establish a permanent colony.

Come on. A journalist from a serious publication is still talking about Mars One as anything other than a large scam? Ridiculous.

Why do you think that Mars One is a scam? Is it not feasible to get humans to Mars in ~10 years?

It has been technically feasible to get humans to Mars for decades already. It has only recently become economically feasible. And we likely have a few more years to go before it becomes politically feasible.

The sticking point has never been the tech. It has always been the people. And in my opinion, Mars One does not have the right people to produce a successful mission.

"... If they grow successfully, the potatoes will then be planted in a simulator that factors in the atmospheric conditions on Mars. ..."

Will it also simulate the cosmic rays Mars has to endure and can these rays be duplicated?

It won't be an exact duplicate, but we know what the radiation flux is, there's no reason we couldn't subject them to the same overall level of radiation.

May I bathe in these rays and become and X-Man or Fantastic Fifth?

The rays are ionizing and will smash apart the DNA molecules in living cells.

no ,you will dead .it is that simple

I hope they're planning on taking TPS or true potato seeds with them. You could fit a million true potato seeds in a small pouch and you'd be set for a long time :)

I suspect Monsanto will "have to Science the shit" into these potatoes and create new GMO strains to fight the cold, the radiation and low water availability.

I would rather have another James Webb telescope or send a few hundred probes to Alpha Centauri with the money it will cost to go to Mars.

Icelanders manage to grow decent crops in greenhouses.

There is no reason to suggest that Martians should operate any differently.

To recreate the surface air pressure of Mars, this experiment should be taking place at an altitude roughly five times the height of Everest or a similarly evacuated chamber. Mars is harsh. (Edit: i.e. yes, all agriculture will likely need to take place under the sort of structures you see on the cover of sci-fi novels from 60s and 70s).

Indeed. They mention the composition of the atmosphere, but the low pressure is conveniently forgotten about. The Mars atmosphere is like a vacuum: 0.00628 atm. Earth atmosphere normal pressure is 1 atm. Essentially, being on the surface of Mars is being in space. And what about the radiation? Mars has no magnetic field like Earth has. So the Solar Wind has free play on the surface.

Which makes living on the Moon suddenly not look so bad!

likely!?

water can't even be in a liquid state at that pressure.(which is why I think the whole "water on Mars" stuff is bogus) You'd have a better chance growing potatoes in a middle of a Siberian winter

I'll kick off the study to produce vodka on Mars and we'll be sorted for colonisation of Mars

That's also a good way to get russians onboard

I wonder if this would be a good application for one of these tomato-potato grafted plants.

http://www.territorialseed.com/product/grafted-tomtato-ketch...

Just finished reading _Red Mars_ and am now reading _Green Mars_, so this is relevant to my interests.

Didn't Mark Wahlberg already do this?

Sounds like someone at NASA read The Martian...

People at NASA helped write The Martian.

Yeah, most of NASA probably. Andy Weir gave a talk at NASA Ames last summer and it was crowded to say the least.

Probably someone in the marketing dept.

I would expect NASA to be more concerned with "public relations" than "marketing".

I know, "potato, potAHto"...

Leave Mars alone;

They should have done corn for the high-fructose corn syrup ... because apparently we need it in everything.

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