[Hplusroadmap] Re: Fw: [Synthetic Biology] BBC E-mail: Plants 'thrive' on Moon rock diet

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thursday 15 May 2008, Pay_the_Piper <pay_the_piper at shaw.ca> wrote:
> There are many kinds of Moon mineral dust. Which kind/which plants?

Actually, I was considering using bacteria for first approximations. 
John Cumbers apparently has some funding and a job exploring these 
topics. He's around here somewhere, on the synthetic biology mailing 
lists and on OpenWetWare, etc. The minerals on the surface of the moon 
seem to include olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase feldspar (anorthosite), 
and the mineral ilmenite is also highly abundant in some mare basalts, 
and an original mineral known as armalcolite is also present. So if we 
could mimic some of this stuff here on earth ..

http://mindat.org/ to figure out where the minerals are and to some 
extent what companies are selling them. 

Then the vacuum chamber needs to be designed.
http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Moontank
http://heybryan.org/projects/atoms/ has links on vacuum tanks.

As for which bacteria, I think cyanobacteria was mentioned recently.

- Bryan
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