🖖 Not your usual data farming

We’ve been talking about ways to grow food off of Earth.

Here’s a company that has been working on advanced gardening for both Earth and beyond.

They were another successful candidate of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge.

Interstellar Lab has been working on automated gardening units that are mostly run by AI.

Skynet for farms

The AI monitors conditions and makes adjustments to the inputs that the plants require.

Optimising growing conditions for each plant to increase yield.

Temperature, water, CO₂, light, nutrients and microorganisms all get monitored.

Puts new meaning to data farming.

The garden is called NUCLEUS.

A series of modules that are part of a self-sustaining closed-loop system.

They’re like terrariums on steroids.

And on top of the constant monitoring and automation they only need between 3-4 hours of human attention.

That’s for seeding, pruning and cultivating.

Mostly because crews will be smaller. So each crew member will have multiple tasks to achieve each day.

Spending all day in ‘the garden’ wouldn’t be ideal.

Their goal is to have modules ready for the Moon by 2026. And Mars by 2030 with Ebios-

Experimental bio-regenerative systems.

a multi-pod setup inflated and connected to support human life on other worlds long-term.

Food wasn’t their only goal when they created these pods.

Medicine, life-support systems and experiments can all be grown and controlled with detailed precision.

Even insects can be grown in the modules.

We’re exploring all the protein and nutrient sources possible.

New ecosystems

These pods can withstand quite a variety of weather conditions.

Makes them ideal for any location on Earth. Or not on Earth.

And keep in mind that the creators of this technology- as well as others we’ve discussed- aren’t trying to replace our current food systems.

They’re trying to add to what’s already in place. To improve on what needs updating.

We’re gonna continue to have more mouths to feed, so we need to augment our current food production.

We’ll need to eat on space missions and longer-term touristic visits.

These technologies provide solutions to both scenarios.

We still need our farmers to provide foods and maintain traditions.

But if we can supplement their efforts, won’t we make significant strides forward?

Won’t fewer people go hungry?

Hospitals, retirement homes and schools should have their own indoor farming systems that provide nutrients to those of us who need it most.

Now I’m picturing homeless shelters and soup kitchens with a much lower food cost if they’re growing food on-site.

How many more people could they help that way?

I’m looking forward to see if Interstellar Lab can reach their goals. It not only means an increased success rate for space missions, but an increase in the quality of life on this planet too.

Cheers.