Robots in the Garden: Odyssey Moon Partnering With Paragon To Put Greenhouses On the Moon March 23, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : lunar plantlife, Odyssey Moon, Paragon , trackback
Leonard David (a space reporting vet who often has insider tidbits at various locales), over at the Coalition for Space Exploration‘s blog, reports that leading Google Lunar X Prize contender Odyssey Moon and space development corporation Paragon will announce this week that they have teamed up for one giant leap for plantkind: delivering a biological greenhouse to the Moon’s surface.
“Growing the first plant on another world has enormous symbolic importance as well as important scientific research value for creating self-contained lunar outposts and eventual settlements, notes Odyssey Moon founder, Bob Richards.” -”Moon Partnership: Green Thumbs Up“, Leonard David, Spacecoalition.com
Paragon is a company with a long list of projects, many thermal and biological, for NASA; SpaceX‘s groundbreaking Dragon capsule; and others.
This is one of the first Odyssey Moon missions to become public besides their Google Lunar X PRIZE effort, “MoonOne“; “MoonTwo”, a mission delivering an International Lunar Observatory to the moon, was announced last July.
The Artemis Project has a solid essay on the subject of lunar greenhouses. Being able to generate oxygen and food on the Moon will be a big boon; the concept seems like an inevitable one as part of lunar development, and to get started now makes a lot of sense. A greenhouse could be cared for robotically, and getting a headstart will help the technology be ready by the time colonists arrive around 2020-2024.
Robots growing plants on a world with no humans… now there’s an interesting existential concept for ya.
Comments»
..and what plant to grow on the Moon ?
Might I suggest Sunflower………seven feet tall.
Now, that will make a lot of kids happy, don’t you think ?
Actually, coincidentally, the solar panels for the lunar outpost look so much like sunflowers in many renderings that I’ve starting calling them that :)
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/312902main_outpost226.jpg
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