Do you think humans will ever begin farming in space?

Question

What will we grow? Why would we bother? What would be the advantages and the disadvantages?

Answer 1

there are plans afoot for the astronauts on the forthcoming Mars mission to grow food on the journey.Simple things like mung bean shoots or mustard and cress which only take a few days to grow.

Answer 2

If memory serves me, experiments in near Earth orbit have been made already.  They were designed to see if plants would grow normally in microgravity or, if not, what the differences would be.  I don't recall any results, however.  The experiments were limited in time, of course, and were small in size.

There aren't any planets in the solar system that would support farms in their current condition.  However, terraforming Mars would likely result in a planet warm and wet enough to support plant life, especially plants bred for colder climates.  

Now, to actually answer your question, when you realize that, by the year 3500 or so, at current rates of population increase, the mass of humanity will equal the mass of the Earth.  That's not a terribly long time (and the population will never approach that here on Earth, of course), so I think it is a certainty that man will have to move out to space somewhere, in order to survive.

Answer 3

strictly, it could be done.  We do have the ability to do this now.  

There is a problem with storage of products and control of gases and bringing nutrient chemicals with us to do this.  it will have to be seen if the scale of the problems justifies the investment.  Also, there is the problem of if we would need food on such a journey; it might be better to put people in suspended animation or somthing like that and let the majority of the flight be remote controlled.  

Answer 4

i wouldn't think so. i don't know much about this, but there's no nutrients in the soil up there... if there even IS soil. and no oxygen. you know, those pesky minor details = ]

Answer 5

We already have! There is a small chamber on board the ISS which is designed for growing plants in, and astronauts have actually grown plants in it. This is primarily for the purpose of scientifically observing how the plants grow differently in free fall, but on at least one occasion the astronauts also ate the plants afterwards. Unfortunately I can't find any source that explicitly says what kinds of plants they ate, but they have definitely grown soybeans on board, and probably ended up eating them.

Answer 6

We would have to create an artificial environment for stuff to grow, other than that - why not?

Other planets have an abundance of elements other than oxygen. In the long run, provided that the human species survive in the next few millions of years, evolution might give us sources of food that can grow on other planets naturally, feeding off the naturally-occurring elements like methane, nitrogen. etc.

Answer 7

sure.  Hydroponics in a pressurised atmosphere - no problem!  Hydroponics is basically growing a plant in water - not soil.  Is actually a very good alternative.  You can even buy little hydroponic kits these days.  Why bother? erm ...... because we can? Advantages - would cut down on soil erosian on earth and hydroponics produces equally nutritious food if not better when compared to traditional growing methods.  Disadvantages - err the food would be in space and the people arent!

Answer 8

Space lacks the necessary ingredients for farming such as fields, hedgerows etc., etc., etc.,

Answer 9

If things could live and grow in space then probably.

I don't know what we could grow, but perhaps an advantage would be that conditions in space could help grow products that are become scarce and difficult to grow on erath.

A disadvantage would be the distrubtion costs between space and earth lol!

I dunno, maybe we could artificially inseminate alien eggs into human women and grow alien babies.

Answer 10

And what water, soil or air will they use?  Makes no economic sense at all.

Answer 11

It's pretty easy to grow food in space.  There are experiments in hydroponics being performed on the ISS.  Currently, it is a lot cheaper to send food to the station on resupply craft, but in the future it may become economical for future space station to grow at least part of their food supply.  By doing so, they will have a more efficient life support system.  A lot of waste materials (particularily carbon dioxide) could be recycled into fertilizer for plants, thus leading to less waste and less life support equipment would be required.  The only problem will be all the equipment needed.  particularily pressurized space.  A station that grows enough food to feed it's crew may have most of it's space used for agriculture.  It won't be worth it unless they make equipment that has a very long lifespan, it may take fifty years for an orbital greenhouse to produce as much food as logisitcs craft could deliver at the same price.  Mir only lasted 15 years before it was abandoned.  

Answer 12

  IT IS A SURE BET THAT THEY NEVER WILL.

Answer 13

I'm going to start with the lack of dirt.

Answer 14

The obvious advantage would be a lot of space.

The disadvantages though would be the giant distance, anything further than the moon would likely take long enough for things to spoil, the massive cost of sending things through space would make it not worth it unless it could be gotten around and the fact that it would have to be terraformed to change the atmosphere and terrain amongst other things.