🚀 go-pugleaf

  
  
  Headline:  Chemist takes NASA breather
  From Aug 19, Fresno Bee, AP, Mike Drago, SPACE CENTER, Houston

  Another NASA fund raising propaganda effort failed.  When will
  people understand that "man-in-a-bottle" experiments are all
  doomed to failure.  We cannot even seal three simple taxa in 
  a bottle.  Such efforts have all resulted in sterility as sure 
  as if they had been in an autoclave.  The biosphere is too 
  complex to imitate.
  
  Subheadline: Experiment on oxygen-producing capability of
  plants declared a success
  
  A British chemist was sealed in a 10X10 room for 15 days where he 
  relied on 30,000 wheat plants and 64 high intensity lamps in the
  next room for oxygen.

  "The space agency wanted to demonstrate that plants alone could 
  provide breathable air for one person for 15 days."  Well, Du-uuh!
  Problem is, it didn't do that at all.  Too much oxygen was 
  produced.  So they had to circulate air in from outside.

  Just how simple and short can we make an experiment that works?
  One would think 15 days was doable.  Seems not.

  "NASA said the project shows humans could eventually thrive 
  on the moon or Mars with systems that recycle life-sustaining
  elements."  
  
  Oh, really?  Send money, right? 
  

... Global per capita grain production down 8% in eight years....


"All that was required of them was a primitive
patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was
necessary to make them accept longer working hours or
shorter rations. And even when they became discontented,
as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere,
because, being without general ideas, they could only
focus it on petty specific grievances.  The larger evils
invariably escaped their notice."
                                 --  George Orwell, 1984