A recent preprint posted to bioRxiv investigates how chickpeas have been successfully grown in lunar regolith simulants (LRS), marking the first time such a guideline has been established not only for chickpeas, but also for growing food for long-term human space missions.
I’m not an expert, but as a lay person I agree with you.
However, I’m guessing people running these experiments are just looking at all the options. Hydroponics is pretty much a solved solution, no? I suppose it makes sense to run these experiments to prove what we already know. I suppose there is a hyper slim chance that lunar soil was somehow beneficial for the plant and made growing easier.
I think the nitrogen issue is probably secondary to the water issue. Hydroponics use way less water. Water is heavy and expensive to ship to the moon. Anything to reduce weight will probably be the priority.
I don’t see how shipping more soil and more water would be better than hydroponics, but sometimes we write papers for problems we don’t have yet, but might have in the future. Some moon colony might be struggling for physical space and need to use soil to grow supplies in an emergency? Might be nice to know they can reserve some moon land and follow these guides to produce food in the soil.
My wife got her PhD in Physics and one of her favorite anecdotes is the critical piece of technology that made her project possible was derived from a mathematical paper written 200 years ago. The dude didn’t have the technology or science to know where his math would be useful, but he published it anyways. Eventually, someone needed it and found it useful.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t think we’ll be shipping water to the moon.
Fortunately it has plenty.
Moreover, it’s easier to ship energy sources (e.g. nuclear, which today are small heat generators) and use that energy to get to the water that’s there.
I wouldn’t ve surprised if there have been numerous studies of how to get full-scale nuclear generation going on the moon, by launching a reactor in modules. I anyone has a link, I’m curious to see what approaches have been considered regarding launching a core, safely.
The one thing the moon does have, thankfully, is water. That means oxygen, water, and hydrogen are provided once you’re there as long as you have power. Essentially, the whole point of colonizing the moon can be seen as a source of water outside of the gravity well for engine reaction mass, radiation shielding, and oxygen. Nitrogen and carbon, unfortunately, you gotta ship, though you can get both by recycling it from pee and the air respectively. That’s why I mention hydroponics, because getting bioavabile nitrogen from pee is a chemical process.
Granted, I am a nurse. Botany and hydroponics are not my wheelhouse. These regolith experiments people keep doing just seem to be going the wrong way.