Plant Growing Martian Robots

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While this design looks really cool, I can’t wrap my head around the actual need for a robot that grows a single plant inside itself on Mars. Well, unless it was a stoner robot, then I totally get it. Then you’d need a robot that just had snacks in it.
 
I guess it makes sense. How else would you send plants out there and find a good environment for them. Just make a robot that can move the plant around and find the best place for sun, when it needs water for the plant can go and search out a water source.

That would be the best way to start growing plants on Mars.
 
Yeah it makes sense to me too. If they could get something like this working, they can send a whole bunch of them to Mars, have the plants grow up and eventually plant themselves in the actual Martian soil to generate some oxygen for the (hopefully) eventual human colonization of Mars.

Seems far-fetched now, but that's how big ideas always start.
 
Was that a serious concept? He goes from designing men's underwear to robots. Amazing what this economy has done to some people lol.
 
Must be some kind of joke. The idea is about as far out there as Mars is to Earth. The amount of energy and maintenance to grow one plant would far outweigh the benefit. So instead of cattle drives, they will have crop (robot) drives?
 
Exavior said:
I guess it makes sense. How else would you send plants out there and find a good environment for them. Just make a robot that can move the plant around and find the best place for sun, when it needs water for the plant can go and search out a water source.

That would be the best way to start growing plants on Mars.
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Would a greenhouse not be the best place to grow Earth plants on Mars? These things would have a high failure rate, both mechanically and in their ability to find suitable growing/watering locations.

Also, not sure why this thing would need a human-looking eye to be interactive if it's for remote use.

I just think they completely misunderstood EVE's directive from WALL-E.
 
Without reading the article, I'm thinking of Wall-E where the little robot carried a plant in his chest compartment most of the show.
 
There's a very good reason: Oxygen production. A million or more of these could help terraform Mars in the period before plants would take hold on their own.
 
We can do it, so why not try? The money is in their hands anyway, nothing much we can do about it...
 
I don't know anything really about martian atmosphere but if the robot could "find" a suitable place for a plant to grow on Mars, wouldn't have nature already have found it first? With Evolution and all.
 
RiZnO said:
I don't know anything really about martian atmosphere but if the robot could "find" a suitable place for a plant to grow on Mars, wouldn't have nature already have found it first? With Evolution and all.
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Very thoughtful question, but the basic structure of life as we know it (plants/animals/insects) may not exist on other planets. They would have grown in their own way unless there is some kind of basic life rule for it to exist (via chemistry & physics). Since we don't know of life on other planets yet, we can only guess. We know what it takes for Earth's plant life to succeed, so recreating that environment on another world would be very time consuming (essentially a huge greenhouse with its own air-tight atmosphere, with possibly additional artificial lighting). So far it appears the surface of Mars is unable to sustain life that may (could?) have grown, but we have yet to travel under the surface (like Earth life in caves and deep seas absent of sunlight).

For the earlier comment on plant life to create oxygen on Mars, it would take thousands of years for plants (or bacteria) to make any appreciable amount of atmosphere if it didn't blow away first.
 
RiZnO said:
I don't know anything really about martian atmosphere but if the robot could "find" a suitable place for a plant to grow on Mars, wouldn't have nature already have found it first? With Evolution and all.
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Life on Mars never evolved beyond bacteria: it's too cold and no oxygen-creating unicellular organisms ever developed. HOWEVER, it can be easily terraformed by introducing life artificially.
 
djBon2112 said:
There's a very good reason: Oxygen production. A million or more of these could help terraform Mars in the period before plants would take hold on their own.
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There isn't enough free CO2 in Mars's atmosphere to generate a significant amount of O2. More importantly Mars atmosphere is less than 1% as dense as Earth's, the air pressure is so low that water cannot exist as a liquid.

What we need to do is grow methane-generating bacteria/algae/whatever on Mars and/or something that can help free the gasses trapped in the surface. Once we've built a decent atmosphere (either by releasing trapped gas or hauling in nitrogen and methane from the outer solar system) and warmed the planet up a bit we can think about growing plants on Mars.
 
What makes mars potentially more habitable than our moon? Besides the mystery of Mars wouldn't the moon serve as a more practical "jumping off" point for space travel/colonization?
 
DeathFromBelow said:
There isn't enough free CO2 in Mars's atmosphere to generate a significant amount of O2. More importantly Mars atmosphere is less than 1% as dense as Earth's, the air pressure is so low that water cannot exist as a liquid.
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I actually didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
 
RiZnO said:
What makes mars potentially more habitable than our moon? Besides the mystery of Mars wouldn't the moon serve as a more practical "jumping off" point for space travel/colonization?
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It's larger, making it easier to create an atmosphere.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
There isn't enough free CO2 in Mars's atmosphere to generate a significant amount of O2. More importantly Mars atmosphere is less than 1% as dense as Earth's, the air pressure is so low that water cannot exist as a liquid.

What we need to do is grow methane-generating bacteria/algae/whatever on Mars and/or something that can help free the gasses trapped in the surface. Once we've built a decent atmosphere (either by releasing trapped gas or hauling in nitrogen and methane from the outer solar system) and warmed the planet up a bit we can think about growing plants on Mars.
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Is a dense martian atmosphere even possible considering its gravitational pull?
 
RoffleCopter said:
Is a dense martian atmosphere even possible considering its gravitational pull?
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The moon could theoretically hold a habitable atmosphere for many millions of years if we were to create one. Mars might not be able to sustain it for billions of years like Earth, but millions of years is plenty of time to make it worthwhile.

My understanding is that the thinner atmosphere of Mars is due mostly to its rapid cooling after it formed rather than loss to space. Here on Earth volcanism and outgassing continues even today since the crust is only a few kilometers thick. The crust of Mars is believed to be ~50 km thick in most places. Its core is relatively inactive and the volcanoes that do exist are ancient, massive, and apparently dead.

RiZnO said:
What makes mars potentially more habitable than our moon? Besides the mystery of Mars wouldn't the moon serve as a more practical "jumping off" point for space travel/colonization?
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At the same time, one of the benefits of the moon is its lack of atmosphere. Landing on and taking off from the moon is relatively simple due to the low gravity and near lack of atmospheric friction. Electromagnet-based launchers on the moon could fire unmanned payloads to Earth (or elsewhere) using solar power collected on the moon. Adding an atmosphere would complicate that.
 
^ Also, since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth you would have to deal with the weather created by the long days and nights. A day on the moon is ~27 Earth days.
 
They're going to need a lot of space-suits for bees.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
^ Also, since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth you would have to deal with the weather created by the long days and nights. A day on the moon is ~27 Earth days.
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Send the eskimos up there then. They're used to long days and nights. :D
 
djBon2112 said:
Life on Mars never evolved beyond bacteria: it's too cold and no oxygen-creating unicellular organisms ever developed. HOWEVER, it can be easily terraformed by introducing life artificially.
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Pray tell how you would go about terraforming an entire planet easily. The most liberal estimates I've heard take at least 1,000 years to turn it into an Earth-like planet.
 
Xee said:
Pray tell how you would go about terraforming an entire planet easily. The most liberal estimates I've heard take at least 1,000 years to turn it into an Earth-like planet.
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1000 years? :eek: Haha. Was this published anywhere?
 
Just send a bunch of pot-heads up to Mars & let them grow plants for everyone else. Their used to growing plants for themselves in dark secreted places, so they should have no problems growing some veggies for everyone else. As long as they get to grow a green house full of good shit for themselves, I'm sure they won't mind. Plus once they use their good stuff I know they won't give a crap.
 
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