For those of us who saw the Oscar nominated film, The Martian, we were all ecstatic to see him, as he put it, “science the crap out of Mars.” In order to survive longer, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) uses his botanist mind and lots of crap to grow potatoes during his stay. While this was super interesting in the movie, the concept made us wonder? Is this as possible as it is portrayed in the film and, more importantly, would these make good chips?
Professor Brian Cox gave a serious answer. “On the space station, they have a box that they put outside it, where they take different organisms, bacteria and things, and expose them to space to see what happens. And they survive, generally. So it is the case that living things, particularly single-celled things, can survive even space travel. Mars is hostile, because of the radiation levels at the surface, but actually it’s got a bit of an atmosphere, so it’s not as hostile as many other places … so, probably yes.” This is so good to know and I’m really happy that future astronauts will be able to enjoy the tastiness of space chips.
Written by Billy Coles
No comments:
Post a Comment