Strawberries May Be Ideal Crop for Space Farms of the Future

Astronauts on long space voyages would probably get pretty tired of freeze-dried meals, so scientists have long been trying to figure out how to grow space food to supplement their diets. According to researchers at Purdue University, strawberries may be one space-friendly crop. They say a low-maintenance strawberry cultivar called Seascape would do pretty well in space. It produces fewer berries than other cultivars, but they're bigger and just as tasty.

Growing plants in space comes with several challenges, not the least of which is providing artificial light. Artificial-sunlight lamps need lots of power, and they generate heat, too, so a spacecraft or space base would need enough power to cool things down. There are no winds or insects to pollinate the plants, which is especially problematic for flowering fruits like tomatoes and strawberries. Roots grow differently in low-gravity environments. And water is a precious commodity, so space crops must do well with small amounts.

NASA has been studying the problem for years, but scientists are still weeding out plant varieties to find the best ones.

How Space Farming Works

 

Ever wonder where we will build homes and expand neighborhoods as we use up more and more of Earth's habitable land? Perhaps space will be the next suburb? But before we start sending children on an intergalactic school bus ride, we must figure out new ways to accomplish everyday tasks in space, like growing food. International organizations are devoting time and resources to the development of sustaining human life beyond Earth. Some of the space programs' goals include the upcoming return to and eventual settlement of the moon, along with the pending manned voyages to Mars.

The International Space Station (ISS) provides a cooperative platform on which to research the critical challenges of putting humans in space for a sustained period of time. And researchers must overcome these challenges before any long flights and permanent habitats in space can happen.

Space farming requires greater understanding if humans are to survive in space without constant contact from Earth. Space farming simply refers to growing plants in space. At first glance this might not seem too tricky, but the inherent properties of space and our ability to travel and live in its environment greatly complicate the situation.

Luckily, the ISS has a whole team of astronauts (green thumb not required) from around the world specializing in a variety of scientific and engineering fields. Astronauts conduct experiments and improve our knowledge of cultivating plants in space, as well as many other critical arenas of science. Earth-bound researchers and scientists analyze the results and conduct their own experiments, thinking up new theories and possible solutions to test.

Farming in space: how would we do it?

Look at what we'd have to consider to set up a farm in space.

Under pressure

Low atmospheric pressure can make plants think they’re dying of thirst. Experiments conducted at the University of Florida under simulated Martian pressure conditions showed that Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the broccoli plant family, reacted badly to rarefied conditions. This will need to be addressed as the Martian atmosphere is only 4/1000ths the pressure of Earth’s and Martian greenhouses will have to be kept at low pressure to make leaks less dangerous. In low pressure environments water evaporates more easily, and the plants dry out even in humid conditions. This triggers the plants’ drought defences, which can damage crop yield.

Poor soil

Lunar soil, in reality pulverised rocks known as regolith, lacks any of the nutrients necessary for plants to grow. On Mars the situation is worse, with the Martian top surface containing chemicals that are actually harmful to organic molecules. Importing huge quantities of topsoil or compost is impractical because of the weight involved and so astronauts will have to grow plants hydroponically, using water that they mine from the surface of the Moon or Mars. They will have to introduce the necessary nutrients, brought from Earth, into the water, then compost and recycle everything for the next harvest.

Space Allotments

NASA studies have shown that each astronaut will need at least 100m2 of crop space to grow all the food they require. Stored supplies could reduce this by half. Such a space requirement may not sound like much, it’s about the size of a large garden allotment, but multiply that by a six-man crew and the structure to house the garden is indeed considerable. Perhaps trees could be grown to reinforce the greenhouse structures rather than using more precious metals or plastics. The upside is that all those plants will provide plenty of oxygen for the astronauts to breathe.

Light Issues

Providing plants with natural light could be a problem, especially in spacecraft en route to Mars. Plants can be picky about what colour light they grow in – they thrive in red and green light, but not in blue. LED lights could be the perfect solution because they use little power and can be tuned to exactly the right light for each crop. Cary Mitchell, of NASA’s Specialized Center of Research and Training for Advanced Life Support at Perdue University, has developed strings of LEDs that hang down between plants providing all-round illumination. He calls them ‘lightsicles’.

The power behind crystals is a bit of a mystery to some, and I’m not talking about their healing abilities, but as forces of nature.    To say that crystals have magical properties, would be a fantastical proposition.  What  is one man’s science, could be another man’s magic, and vice versa.

Some crystals work much the same way that lasers do : – they take scattered rays of energy and make the energy field so coherent and unidirectional that a tremendous force is generated outward. 

Some crystals exhibit seemingly magical abilities to the unlearned mind:  -  certain crystalline materials, such as some minerals, previously absorb energy from electromagnetic radiation or other ionizing radiation, and this is re-emitted as light upon heating of the material.

Both of these are natural occurrences, but have also been  experimented with, in controlled environments, proving  that ‘unexplained phenonema’ will always out with a scientific explanation.

Thinking back to the mutations taking place between Maroon and Ertekon during full Eclipse, one can only wonder if there must be “a little something in the air”.

MAROON:  How the planet came to be named

The idea that a planet needs a name upon discovery is nothing new.   What baffled the scientists the most, was that this visiting world had not been previously noticed.  While they were residing on Ertekon, they researched through their telescopes,  hoping to find a reasonable explanation for this mystery.  It was estimated that every twenty years or so, the two planets would pass by in each other’s orbital plane.  The result came about that Ertekon witnessed an unusual phenonemon;  the sun would be blocked by the other larger planet  for a day or two.

As discovered by the scientists, the larger planet shared land with a expansive cluster of what appeared to be giant crystals, reaching high into the atmosphere.   At the time of the eclipse, both planets were in Perihelion;  wherein the planets were closest to the sun.  This would explain the increase in solar activity needed to bring about the following events.

The larger planet’s magnetosphere ; a ‘magnetic bubble’, would protect it from  solar winds, but Ertekon was considered to be a dead planet , and thus did not share such a protective field.   When the eclipse occurred, some of the solar radiation / high-energy particles had escaped through the protective magnetosphere shields, and collided with air molecules in the upper atmosphere of the planet.  This, in theory, added with the unexplained properties of the giant crystals, caused a reaction similar to Earth’s ‘Auroras’, but intensified ten-fold with the gases in their unique atmosphere, thus creating a storm of blue fire in the outer atmosphere.  The storm would  intensify and be aimed directly at Ertekon in full Eclipse.  During this event, violent flares of magnetic energy would escape the outer atmosphere, travelling into space, and hitting any celestial object within its path.  Combined with the mystical properties of the unresearched crystals, the explosive flares of magnetic energy would connect and mutate any living being in its way.  To random a guess, both planets’ would be in proximity to each other for almost a week, a few days before and a few days after eclipse.  Once an individual was affected, this would result in a temporary mutation which would only last a few days, at least until the larger planet had left  Ertekon’s orbital plane.

As the larger planet would move away, and out of Perihelion, the elliptical orbit would alter as the planet’s axial tilted and rotation differed, thus the gases that were concentrated over the crystal lands would disperse. 

It would be these gases that would create a reddish-purple dust-like trail, bringing to mind the colour of Maroon.

NEW POSITION OF ERTEKON:        Formerly known as Sixth, but now bumped up to Seventh.

POSITION OF MAROON:        Sixth planet from the Sun

ORBITAL PERIOD AROUND SUN:        +-20 – 22 years

ROTATION PERIOD:        10 hours = 1 day

SURFACE TEMPERATURE:        +- 15 degrees Celsius

DIAMETER OF PLANET:    5125 kilometres  (relatively quite small, compared to Earth’s 12756.32 km’s)

Log on to Amazon.com to check out my novel MAROON.

KENDALL of ERTEKON:  The beginning

Greetings Sci-fyians!  I once read that “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep, because that’s when reality is far better than your dreams”. It would be absolutely incredible to live in your dreams, continuously on a roller-coaster ride of adventurous escapades… 

Well, you can – as long as you are reading this, I will make every effort to draw you into my worlds, and promise you an insight into behind-the-scenes of my story-telling.

My much loved character is a young man of 27 years, in the year 2055:

“I am Kendall, the unsung hero of a distant planet called Ertekon.  Born on Earth, to live amongst the stars, I came to Ertekon when I was just 7 years old, an innocent but gifted child.  My dad is a preacher and my mother a counsellor, giving them the perfect backing to raise a precocious whit like me.  We were part of a group that settled on this unbelievably stark, cold desert of a planet, just outside of Jupiter.  Ertekon had absolutely nothing, no vegetation, no life forms, just miles and miles of dust, apart from a treasury of ice and water way beneath the surface.  The powers that be, had built a self-sustaining colony on this barren planet, and it took decades to finish. 

In 2035, the first colonists arrive on Ertekon, not realizing the destruction that would literally explode into this new world.  Something to do with another planet appearing in our orbit.  Well, blow me down with a feather, did I react or what?!  Uh… I forgot to tell you, I’m psychic.  That’s one of the reasons Pa and Ma took this venture;   it seems little me couldn’t play nice with the other kids, something about being a “Freaky geek”.  Yes, that’s one of the milder terms they used to call me, also “The Stoner” for when I used to zone out while having visions;  now I’m not going to tell you what else, it’s virtually unprintable, but you can imagine.

So, this is the story of my journey from a ‘wonderful’ childhood, through to the present: 

I started out as a nondescript infant, blessed (or cursed) with the wondrous powers endowed on me at 5 years old;  torn from the Earth that I embraced but refused to embrace me.  On Ertekon,during a freakish solar phenonemon, I mutated temporarily, into a being never before witnessed;  scary stuff.  And then I grew up.  Big.  And buff.  No jokes, being in a different gravitational pull other than Earth seemed to agree with me;  not like the other colonists, they were already adults, and I was the only child amongst them.  And then I met this girl, who seemed to radiate a surreal presence in my world.  This person threw my normal inner calm into agitation at times, causing me to question my sanity.  We eventually tolerated each other, forming a necessary bond to the point of saving the world as it were.

The problem with saving the world is that you don’t get the thanks that you deserve.  I did it once when this  unchartered planet entered Ertekon’s orbit in 2035, and everyone was scared of me for years after that.  Only when my ma died, did they eventually accept my humanity.

So now, with the strange planet orbiting again 20 years later, and having gone through my transformation once again, I know who I am, and I like it.  I am now a full Professor, having studied with the best that NASA has employed in this space-station I call home, but not quite.  We have a large intake of students in the college section, that I take pleasure in lording over.  I still have the odd vision, not something I can really control, don’t even talk about the nightmares!   As for happiness, I’d sell my right kidney to retain the bubbles of contentment that burst over me from time to time, as would any non-mutated human. "

"One thing I know for sure, is that I’m going home.  Somewhere, somehow, and it’s not Earth.”

PLANET ERTEKON

A few decades into the 21^st century, Ertekon was discovered by a Russian Astronomer;  thus the unusual name.

Postion:    Sixth Planet from the Sun, halfway between Jupiter and Saturn

Distance from Sun:    1187.70 million kilometres

Distance from Earth:      1009.5 million kilometres

Travelling time from Earth:      Just over two years

Orbital period around Sun:      22.45 years (compared to Earth’s 365 days)

Rotation period:     16 hours (equivalent to 1 Earth day:  +- 8 hours daylight and +-8 hours night)

Surface temperature:    10 degrees Celsius

Diameter of Planet:        2524 kilometres