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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

Amazing.

I wonder if other plant species are better suited to growing in Lunar “soil”. Just like on Earth plants prefer one type of soil to another.

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At least _prior_ to knowing anything else about regolith, aside from it sometimes having volcanic origins: Speaking as a person who grows a wide variety of woody tree species (pines, maples, junipers, cottonwoods, azaleas, etc) in inorganic substrates like pure perlite, pure lava, pure pumice (+combinations of those and other volcanic media), and has seen all of these tree species happily send roots into things like IKEA astroturf or blocks of Rockwool, it doesn't surprise me that regolith could maybe work as a grow media.

Fascinating... dare I ask, is that a hobby? A very unusual job?

Bonsai. Hobby for me, but unusual job for my mentors.

Is it not the case that they'd be 'looking' for good soil beyond those surfaces, even if it wasn't there?

It makes sense evolutionarily to 'just work' when possible, especially since the alternative is death

> pure lava,

Is this jargon for some lava-derived rock like obsidian or basalt? Because I'm fairly sure even extremophile bacteria, never mind any kind of tree, wouldn't be able to grow in actual (ie molten rock) lava.

Interestingly ionic stresses on plants is not a problem unique to the moon - There are plenty of places on earth where(relative to typ. earth soil) high salinity soils exist :

https://www.agriculture.com/crops/cover-crops/new-life-for-s...

With a little bit of selective breeding and genetic manipulation moon diets might include a lot of specialized barley and sugar beets!

Salicornia do really well in salty marshy areas and are edible!

I'm picturing the solar system's first batch of actual moonshine.

Which for that very reason is a feature in every single piece of space-based sci-fi ever

just litter the moon with seeds see what does good

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