It proves we can grow plants in the available regolith. Given the results of the experiment as shown in the article a not all obvious result that highlights some challenges. E.g. the plant growing in the Apollo 11 sample turned purple from all the stress, while plants in all moon samples grew slower and showed genetic stress markers. That alone should tell us that growing plants there isn't just adding water and nutrients.
Sometimes science is confirming things you already suspect.
Often that's still useful. Here, we now know we can grow plants in lunar soil, but that they may struggle, and that struggle may vary depending on the plant and the exact type of lunar soil.
Those are all things we could've guessed at before, but now we know them, and we have a good jumping off point for further research.
they added nutrients we know are necessary, and didn't remove anything (afaict) from the soil that they don't know the effects of. They also compared it to a control that is presumably similarly deficient to the extent possible from any place on a planet as teeming with life as Earth, and found differences they now need to explain.
A thing I think people (perhaps even Very Smart People especially) don't recognize is that our understanding of nutrition-related stuff in general is just.. not actually that great? Our knowledge of what makes things grow or not grow is basically built on Easy Mode (a nitrogen rich atmosphere with billions of years of biological background in every nook and cranny). We still have a lot to learn about what it'll take in Hard Mode. And learning one hard mode environment (the moon) will probably help us learn others (mars).
> There are two profound differences in the chemistry of lunar regolith and dirt from terrestrial materials. The first is that the Moon is very dry. As a result, those minerals with water as part of their structure (mineral hydration) such as clay, mica, and amphiboles are absent from the Moon's surface.
> The second difference is that lunar regolith and crust are chemically reduced, rather than being significantly oxidized like the Earth's crust.
They added water and oxygen. Which undoes both of above. So they ended up with more or less aseptic earth dirt. And yeah, plants grow in that, duh.
I don't see what is so absurd about this. If we are growing crops on the moon we are going to add water and air. The success here means we wouldn't have to lug tons of soil to the moon in order to grow crops, we can use the available regolith as a base.
Granted, it's not something I expect to come up in my lifetime, but research doesn't have to be immediately practical.
There’s not really any reason to grow crops on the moon though. A lunar base could be useful but never a self sufficient settlement of any sort. The moon cannot support a real atmosphere.
Growing crops on the moon wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with being self-sufficient, right? Wouldn’t it just be a straightforward matter of whether sending the water and nutrients to grow crops would be cheaper than sending food grown on Earth?
It will be orders of magnitude cheaper to send food from earth.
Growing crops requires time, water, nutrients, warmth sunlight, labor, and a lot space.
I would wager that last one is the biggest issue but the others are non trivial. A starship heavy launch filled with food is ~$10M and is wayyy overkill.
Moonberries could be tasty? Some form of agriculture could improve morale on a base; fresh food is nice. Possibly helpful for processing waste (although bag it and ignore it seems pretty viable too).
Moon dust is extremely dangerous. The taste would likely be just a function of nutrients. Seems like it would be a big risk. The ISS and subs do just fine without growing food.
Couldn’t the CO2 be turned back into O2 + C? Understandably the tech to do so efficiently might not exist right now, but from a materials perspective I don’t see why not, with enough recycling. (Putting aside that Earth would still have to supply spare parts and some smaller amount of materials)
Without reading the article I suspect the benefit is not needing to bring loads of earth soil on moon missions. Of course there’s also hydroponics but idk if it works for every possible plant. Having another option seems good.
I think it essentially proves that its not toxic for or otherwise inhibits plant growth. Whether the plants themselves become toxic though, is a relevant question...
If they are adding nutrients and water, then it doesn't seem like a big deal at all. Growing plants in rockwool is an established technique, and I guess plants don't extract any nutrients from it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31374720 (29 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31358609 (69 comments)