Apr 13, 2016

  All, thank you for the support. Things have been progressing well I have worked out a way around one of the 2 technical mistakes from the Martian, and have had it approved as viable by by science team. This problem was that of how to grow food plants in soil full of heavy metals that are deadly to humans. 

"The soils contain heavy metals like lead, arsenic and mercury and also a lot of iron," Wieger Wamelink, lead researcher of a team from Wageningen University & Research centre in the Netherlands have grown crops including tomatoes, rye, radish, pea, leek, spinach, garden rocket, cress, quinoa and chives in soil made to simulate what could be made by combining organic compounds with the ’soil’ on both Mars and the moon. 

It has not been tested if potatoes (or other plants) will pick up these heavy metals, so it is probably best to remove or reduce them from the soil.  Thus the farming will start as hydroponic for food and others to remove the contaminants from the soil and later it will move to more 50/50 hydroponic / soil crops. In discussing this with Rita, she felt that the approach was sound.