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Comment by skymer | Hacker News Reader

Pure clickbait. Solar panels turn sunlight into electricity. Electrolysis creates acetate. Mushrooms, yeast, algae grow in acetate.

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Only if you start from solar panels. Yeast and green algae could be grown from anything that produces electricity at that point (geothermal, nuclear).

I'm guessing the complexity and costs don't warrant using it on Earth, thus the suggestion of use on Mars.

Also. From the article.

"The potential for employing this technology to grow crop plants was also investigated. Cowpea, tomato, tobacco, rice, canola, and green pea were all able to utilize carbon from acetate when cultivated in the dark.

'We found that a wide range of crops could take the acetate we provided and build it into the major molecular building blocks an organism needs to grow and thrive.'"

…

"“Imagine someday giant vessels growing tomato plants in the dark and on Mars—how much easier would that be for future Martians?”"

Hm, I guess the efficiency part is possibly interesting on Earth too. Could allow for fresh produce in inaccessible areas with limited space and difficult shipping, even if the power was solar collected, given the efficiencies are so much higher than plant photosynthesis. South pole research station, small islands with infrequent shipping, nuclear submarines.

From a land-use perspective, growing this way can be very efficient. With most industrially grown crops you are essentially limited to one "layer" of crops; but here you could stack crops in a warehouse (though similar arguments apply to vertical farms using artificial light).

> (though similar arguments apply to vertical farms using artificial light).

Other than this could potentially reduce the energy requirement by 75% or more.

> Imagine someday giant vessels growing tomato plants in the dark and on Mars—how much easier would that be for future Martians?

Tomatoes are naturally pollinated only by bees. If you don’t have pollination, you don’t have tomatoes. Artificial pollination of tomatoes requires some that vibrates like a bee. Such devices are called tomato ticklers. Efficient pollination seems like a bit of a problem to solve at scale.

That was solved long ago...

Tomato & Blossom Set Spray contains a plant hormone found in nature that promotes blossom set and fruit development. Use to promote fruit to set and for larger fruits and vegetables

https://bonide.com/product/tomato-blossom-set-spray-rtu/

Why can't you just use sunlight from Mars to grow food on Mars?

I imagined energy would not be the main bottleneck to growing food on a different planet.

There's a lot less of it on Mars. Also exposing things to sunlight is complicated by the high levels of radiation.

Article in the second statement refers to the efficiency of natural plants' way of food production: "This process, however, is very inefficient, with only about 1% of the energy found in sunlight ending up in the plant." So comparing it to the current efficiency of photovoltaic sources of energy (up to 50% https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/photovoltaics-and-...) and allowing for a lot of losses of energy in the whole process it is still not unexpected to have a couple of times better effectiveness than of natural process. It's worth reading a bit more than the header...

I was going to say: Photosythesis without light? You don't need a science degree or even read to article to know the title is utter rubbish.

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