General The plants that would (probably) be taken to the stars

[Spinward Scout]

This is an interesting video.

How many plants do you need to breathe? TESTED

I wonder if they would help terraforming Mars.

Part 2 of the video

 

[Commander Truestar]

Well, the primary toxic component of Mars is its dust, containing perchlorates, silica and nanophase iron oxides posing health risks to Humans.
Perchlorates can disrupt thyroid function and blood cell production while fine silica dust can cause progressive lung scarring. Other potentially toxic trace metals include chromium, beryllium, arsenic, and cadmium. These can be inhaled, absorbed into the bloodstream, and cause inflammation, scarring, and disease, making dust mitigation essential for human missions.

That said, there is nowhere on Mars where crops can be grown including enclosed spaces like sealed large lava tubes, etc.
All those spaces are entirely infiltrated by those substances as a natural strata.

So, I'm guessing that any plant crop space would have to have large man-made structures created in which to grow.
Especially if it needs to be grown in crops large enough to mass feed a population.

 

[whartung]

That said, there is nowhere on Mars where crops can be grown including enclosed spaces like sealed large lava tubes, etc.
All those spaces are entirely infiltrated by those substances as a natural strata.

So is the premise that Martian soil can not be used for growing plants, even if it's done with filtered air? That the soil is, essentially, toxic?

Could you use plants to leech the toxins out of the soil, so after 5/10/100 crops of grass/alfalfa/whatever the soil could be cleansed to safe levels?

 

[Commander Truestar]

So is the premise that Martian soil can not be used for growing plants, even if it's done with filtered air? That the soil is, essentially, toxic?
Could you use plants to leech the toxins out of the soil, so after 5/10/100 crops of grass/alfalfa/whatever the soil could be cleansed to safe levels?

Honestly, my connections are on the rover teams.
I do know some of the bio-science folks but I don't have answers from the research on that.

I can say the math should be very interesting.
There is no depth at which the toxins fade. Mars is deadly to the bone and the examples in "The Martin" shine like lights in the darkness
"Mark Watney" didn't and couldn't use local ground for anything, considering how short term his situation was.
So, early colonies can't either. Which means enough foil packs until they can build and sterilize a space large enough to create a "starter farm"

Now, I'm working with a farmer in Georgia on saving his farm after his Hurricane Helene damage was denied by his insurance providers.
And, while I'm working on saving the farm, he's pumping me full of data for recovery of his existing and salt-water hammered fields here on Earth.
And he's talking years while he works the numbers my team will use to find his insurance company. Years. On Earth.

That said, "my theory" is that even starter farms on Mars will be very small and yield minimal crops.
Because of that, I expect they will be growing crops specific to the needs of growing the soil. Not growing wide ranges of food stuffs.
Yes, those few crops which will be grown will supplement the foil packs. But it won't nearly be replacing.
Which means that early colony populations will have to be kept very low, with limited new arrivals shepherding supply-heavy transports.

And, yes. The longer they work, the more they will be doing things like mixing the limited amount of Terra-soil with solid wastes just like the fictional Watney did. And, the plantings will be specific to breaking down and normalizing that waste.

At the same time, chemical leeching is a known factor.
The more planting the colony does to suck the toxins out of the top soil....the more leeching will rise from below the "Mars soil" chambers if they are not bottom sealed. And if they are bottom sealed, the simple truth is that we'll have to continuously build more and more "container farms" - which also means we'll have to shift more and more material to the colony instead of people.

And, those chambers will also have to be built and sealed while sealed bags of Mars soil are moved in. Because Martian soil is "10 million parts per billion" where the upper acceptable limit for Humans is18 parts per billion in drinking water. So, you can't just wheel it through the colony. So, you'll have teams continuously building container farms just to bring production up to minimum levels to support the existing population.

I can go on and write a book, but the answer is we won't be able to grow enough food without an insane amount of constant continuous supply from Terra.

And, if one thing goes wrong, there won't be any magic "The Martian" solution to keep them alive.
They'll have to draw straws to see who's gonna live and who will be part of the dye off.

And, that's a current assessment based on NASA projections

 

[Spinward Scout]

They would probably need a layered Container for growing with different levels growing different things. And rotate them. So, they all get sunlight and such. And anything like mushrooms that don't need the light would be underground. Plus, hydroponics is getting really advanced. Or looks advanced anyway.

Most of any permanent settlement would need to be underground to protect from Cosmic Rays. I'm sure they are compiling daily exposure with the rovers.

 

[Dragoner]

Grow it in space:


My answer would be all of our crops, alien species would likely have incompatible isomerism, and rotamer libraries.

 

[Spinward Flow]

To put it politely, "farming" on other planets is exceptionally unlikely to make use of "local dirt" (especially if untreated!) for the growing of crops for food on a rapid timescale. Doing so EVENTUALLY after a sustained amount of colonization ... it's certainly possible. Immediately upon initial colonization, almost certainly not.

So, early colonies can't either. Which means enough foil packs until they can build and sterilize a space large enough to create a "starter farm"

Exactly.

Now, something that could be "jump started" a lot quicker than any kind of soil farming would be hydroponics, aquaponics, aeroponics type of (vertical) farming. Reason being that it's a lot easier to "filter" scavenged water/air from the environment for food production in non-Terra environments than it would be to "develop topsoil" for the production of ground crops that require ... DIRT. The sheer quantity of factors that need to go into making "farm dirt" in an alien environment are (conceptually) prohibitive. Getting the levels of carbon, nitrogen, phosporous and mycelium going for a healthy dirt analog on alien worlds will be QUITE the engineering challenge.

Given enough Time, Tools and Tech Manuals(™) ... it can no doubt be done ... but that's an investment in life sciences and engineering if you intend to get there, with no guarantees of success at the outset.

 

[Grav_Moped]

This sets up an interesting question: in the OTU, is this a problem? Or did the Ancients take care of that at the time on most of the worlds they put humans on?

 

[Dragoner]

This sets up an interesting question: in the OTU, is this a problem? Or did the Ancients take care of that at the time on most of the worlds they put humans on?

Seems like they didn't on Vland.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Seems like they didn't on Vland.

Agree. But if this was typical, there would be myriad 300,000-year-dead human colonies to be found, and not many surviving human minor races

 

[kilemall]

This sets up an interesting question: in the OTU, is this a problem? Or did the Ancients take care of that at the time on most of the worlds they put humans on?

Apparently at least one colony got a grow fungus kit.

Given Grandfathers abilities he might have altered the biosphere to near earth normal, but maybe didn’t in many cases cause Big ScienceExperiment.

 

[Rupert]

I assume that the OTU experienced some form of panspermia event at some point in the distant past, and thus most life-bearing worlds in the known space region are at least somewhat compatible. This can be good (easy colonisation and importation of Terran crops) and bad (the local bugs find colonists and their food crops tasty).

 

[Condottiere]

If it's specific to Mars, I think you have to drill into the bedrock, and then glass it.

You probably have to flood it, by dropping any number of iceballs into the atmosphere, using the water to filter out the toxins.

And then artificially recreating a magnetic planetary field.

 

[mike wightman]

Well, the primary toxic component of Mars is its dust, containing perchlorates, silica and nanophase iron oxides posing health risks to Humans.
Perchlorates can disrupt thyroid function and blood cell production while fine silica dust can cause progressive lung scarring. Other potentially toxic trace metals include chromium, beryllium, arsenic, and cadmium. These can be inhaled, absorbed into the bloodstream, and cause inflammation, scarring, and disease, making dust mitigation essential for human missions.

That said, there is nowhere on Mars where crops can be grown including enclosed spaces like sealed large lava tubes, etc.
All those spaces are entirely infiltrated by those substances as a natural strata.

So, I'm guessing that any plant crop space would have to have large man-made structures created in which to grow.
Especially if it needs to be grown in crops large enough to mass feed a population.

Perchlorates are easily removed, they are water soluble. So all you need is to wash the "soil" thoroughly. Collect the run off and you can use it to then remove a lot of the metal contaminants in the "soil".

The "soil" is really just an anchoring medium, your best bet it to set up vertical hydroponic farms until you have sufficient compost to start mixing in the "soil".

Fungi and bacteria can also be used to remove toxins, these can then be harvested to give you a useful supply of metals and the like.

 

[Spinward Flow]

This sets up an interesting question: in the OTU, is this a problem? Or did the Ancients take care of that at the time on most of the worlds they put humans on?

Seems like they didn't on Vland.

And presumably didn't in a LOT of other places ... meaning there are plenty of "failed transplant" attempts lying around out there in fossil records (good luck finding them all!).

A proper scientific mind would be interested in doing a matrix of experiments to determine "minimum threshold for viability" of transplanted life forms. Vland could have been one of the "harsher" experiments that wound up succeeding (despite the odds against). This would mean that almost all of the "minor humaniti" variants spread across Charted Space are really just experimental environmental mutations adapted to local conditions that survived into the modern era ... while plenty of others didn't make it (for reasons various and sundry on a spreadsheet analysis kept somewhere).

Some variants of "minor humaniti" are more recent genetic modifications for colonization of difficult environments on specific worlds.
Minor Human Race
Variant Human Race

 

[Condottiere]

That would be survivor bias.

We have any number of , loosely termed, civilizations, that thrived in a particular environment, and then something changed, and then they didn't.

One major difference would be, on Earth, you can pack up your belongings, and move somewhere more amicable.

 

[whartung]

Perchlorates are easily removed, they are water soluble. So all you need is to wash the "soil" thoroughly. Collect the run off and you can use it to then remove a lot of the metal contaminants in the "soil".

Yea, curious if the soil could be washed (but this brings up the idea that even if there's Martian ice, the melt water may be toxic in itself).

But, yea, could the soil be washed, could it be baked. And is the processing level a reasonable ask for a local "soil plant" that's part and parcel to bootstrapping the colony.

 

[TamsinP]

If you have power, purifying the contaminated water won't be a problem. The pure water can then be used to wash the soil, then recycled through the purifier.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Now, something that could be "jump started" a lot quicker than any kind of soil farming would be hydroponics, aquaponics, aeroponics type of (vertical) farming. Reason being that it's a lot easier to "filter" scavenged water/air from the environment for food production in non-Terra environments than it would be to "develop topsoil" for the production of ground crops that require ... DIRT. The sheer quantity of factors that need to go into making "farm dirt" in an alien environment are (conceptually) prohibitive. Getting the levels of carbon, nitrogen, phosporous and mycelium going for a healthy dirt analog on alien worlds will be QUITE the engineering challenge

Exactly, except for a number of key issues none of us have considered on that end of the subject
Especially on Mars, there is not the water to carry out hydroponics or aquaponics on a large scale. And aeroponics still requires humidified air. So, those are not likely to be solutions for farming on that planet.

Also, a while back, there was a conversation which can be defined as "Coffee will be available everywhere"
Well, both the flavor and mineral content of varying types of Coffee are based on where the plant producing the bean is grown. What is in the local soil there. But, with hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics, there is no soil. Minerals are infused in hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics through specifically prepared nutrient solutions.

So now, instead of digging up native soil, sealing it to move into special-built internal growth chambers, and leeching it, we have specialized supply trains bringing in the mineral supplements and specifically devoted bio-med teams creating those solutions.

So, we still have a major narrowing of the supply chain suggesting allowing the population to grow to significant levels is doubtful at best.

 

[Commander Truestar]

If it's specific to Mars, I think you have to drill into the bedrock, and then glass it.

You probably have to flood it, by dropping any number of iceballs into the atmosphere, using the water to filter out the toxins.

And then artificially recreating a magnetic planetary field.

The issue with this theory is that you are not filtering out the toxins....
The soils "IS" the toxins.

So, you're not filtering out something foreign - You are hoping to remove all the content to find a neutral matrix
This is exactly the same as removing all the contents from a cell(a process called selective cell lysis), to get an empty cell wall and structures for analysis of rare cells, and preparing samples for techniques like protein purification or DNA extraction.