Today, a half century after Neil Armstrong took one small step onto the surface of the Moon, there are still just ten humans living in space—the crew of the International Space Station. But, after decades of talk, both government agencies and entrepreneurs are now drawing up more concrete plans to return to the Moon, and even travel onward to Mars. Getting there is one thing, but if we plan to set up colonies, we'll have to figure out how to feed ourselves. Will Earth crops grow in space—and, if so, will they taste different? Will we be sipping spirulina smoothies and crunching on chlorella cookies, as scientists imagined in the 1960s, or preparing potatoes six thousand different ways, like Matt Damon in The Martian? Listen in this episode for the stories about how and what we might be farming, once we get to Mars. (encore presentation) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hello.
Hello.
And to those of you who celebrate, happy Halloween here at GASTROPOD hq, we're.
More into sci fi than spooky stuff.
And so we're celebrating with worms in space.
That's right.
Thanks to our friends at American Express, we're excited to bring you an encore presentation of one of our favorite episodes, all about eating and farming in space.
We'll be back with a brand new episode in just one week, but for now, enjoy.
There's quite some difference, especially with the moon.
The moon soil is very coarse.
It's very sharp.
And that's one of the very important differences, not only for the plants, but also for the worms, because they eat soil.
And if you eat soil and it's sharp, it's the same as if we would eat broken glass.
Oh, man, those poor little wormies.
But why are we feeding worms moon soil?
Exactly.
How do scientists even get soil from the moon in the first place?
Sure, we need to study it if we're ever going to grow food in outer space, but where does this crushed moon rock come from?
Guess what?
You're listening to gastropod, the podcast that answers these kinds of questions.