Renewable Revolution

NASA Astronauts Grow Vegetables in Space for First Time

Lorraine Chow | August 10, 2015 12:56 pm

Goodbye freeze-dried space food. NASA’s astronauts aboard the International Space Station are taking a giant leap with its menu: fresh-grown vegetables.

Expedition 44 crew members, including astronaut Scott Kelly who’s on a special year-long mission in space, will be dining on a crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system that’s sitting on the station itself.

Called the Veg-01, the experiment aims to “study the in-orbit function and performance of the plant growth facility and its rooting ‘pillows,’ which contain the seeds,” according to a NASA press release.

The Veggie unit, which is expandable and collapsible, contains a light bank that features a flat panel red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and crew observation (which explains why the plants are glowing pink in some photos). Half of the harvest, which was plucked 33 days after it was initially planted, will be eaten. The other half will be packaged and frozen on the station until it can be sent to Earth for analysis.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/10/grow-vegetables-space/

Agelbert Comment: The importance of this is not that they can travel to mars or establish space colonies. What is REALLY important is that LED photon frequencies have been fine tuned (for over 5 years now) so they can grow plants indoors.

That means that with a Renewable Energy source like PV, CSP, wind, tide, etc. plus efficient battery storage, we can DOUBLE (or more) our plant food production by growing underground or in multistory farms. 

These farms will be able to grow plants all year and, in some cases, 24 hours a day. They will have climate control to deal with our increasingly hostile climate due to global warming visiting us from the stupidity of burning fossil fuels. As the video ( ) points out at the end, hot sandy deserts can now grow plants underground in order to eventually avoid the need to import vegetables. 

Also, tuned LEDs will enable humans to get vitamin D in low to no sunlight conditions like winter near the poles.   


Google "LED tuned for plant growth" for more information. 

"Technical knowledge of Carrying Capacity will not save us; only a massive increase in Caring Capacity will." -- A. G. Gelbert