Why Cotton and mustard?

[Stanley Edwards]

Potatoes also. And, fruit fly eggs all on the dark side of the moon?

Started a new thread to keep things simple. Anyone read an explanation for the choice of plants taken to the moon by China?

 

[2hats]

Potatoes also. And, fruit fly eggs all on the dark side of the moon?

Started a new thread to keep things simple. Anyone read an explanation for the choice of plants taken to the moon by China?

Cotton, oilseed rape, potato and arabidopsis, fruit fly eggs and yeast.

Partly because their genomes are pretty well characterised and understood and so make for handy laboratory test beds. Partly because together they can form a sustainable, closed, mini ecosystem. Partly because they would provide for food (potatoes), oil (rapeseed) and clothing (cotton) for any future human settlement.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Is there genuinely some belief it might work, or is it as much about showing how it won't work I wonder. Just a bit of a gimmick?

Pretty cool anyway.

 

[WouldBe]

Some new stir fry recipe?

E2A: A chow moon perhaps.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The potatoes clearly a nod to Matt Damon's horticulture skills in The Martian.

 

[Yossarian]

It did not end well for the cotton.

Chinese government incarcerates family of dead moon plant for failing the Party

 

[MikeMcc]

Is there genuinely some belief it might work, or is it as much about showing how it won't work I wonder. Just a bit of a gimmick?

Pretty cool anyway.

It was never intended to work for a long period. The probe is solar powered, so when it entered Lunar night the chamber was always going to freeze. In part it was a flag waving exercise, but it did show that the initial growth phase wasn't adversely affected by gravity, radiation, etc. So the experiment achieved the aims that were set.

 

[T & P]

They should have also taken some Japanese knotweed and dropped it directly on the surface from the probe as it flew above. I bet in a year’s time the bastards would have covered the entire Moon, inhospitable conditions or not.