Thursday, November 24, 2016

NASA's Prototype of Space Station's Advanced Plant Habitat


A high fidelity test version of NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), the largest plant chamber built for the agency, arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida the third week of November, 2016.  The engineering development unit arrived by truck, was offloaded and transported to a laboratory at the Space Station Processing Facility.  Inside the lab, NASA engineers, and scientists and technicians will train with the test unit to learn how to handle and assemble it before the actual APH unit arrives early next year.  They also will test how the science integrates with the various systems of the plant habitat.

The unit is a closed-loop system with a controlled environment than can house large plants.  The system will use red, green and blue LED lights, similar to the Veggie growth system that is currently on the International Space Station.  The APH also has the capability of using white LEDs and infrared light.  The APH unit will have 180 sensors and four times the light output of Veggie. The small-scale experiment, called Plant Habitat 1 or PH01, will contain Arabidopsis seeds, small flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard. PH01 and the APH unit will be delivered to the space station in 2017.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill White



Note:  all links are to NASA and open in another window


Here's an extraplanetary greenhouse and it will be followed by a bigger one.

Well.  If you're not thinking ganja in space then get cracking with it, Astroman.

Some may not be familiar with NASA's Ganja Helmet GHB01 which is used in space where the smoke must not be allowed to escape.  The GHB01 has a vape attachment to vaporize your ganja leaves and the helmet prevents any of that delectable smoke from escaping.  When it comes time to vent the helmet, the astronaut goes to the airlock to open and vent it.  It is then closed again so the airlock can vent to space, after which time the astronaut can reenter the spacecraft when the normal cycle completes to re-pressurize the lock.

Note:  NASA has lost several stoner astronauts this way.  After they opened the airlock to vent it to space, they floated away and the last heard from the most recent one was, "Wow, man.  Look at all the fuckin' stars."

There was no way to retrieve the stoner astronauts into the International Space Station so they became orbiting satellites.  Some achieve immortality through painting graffiti on abandoned buildings and others do it by becoming orbiting space junk.  It's Destiny.


People often talk about, gee whiz, it sure would be good to send some artists into space and the one tiny problem with that is every artist except Jackson Pollack has been a stoner and Pollack wasn't because he was a blazing alcoholic and a nightmare bitch to be around.  In his final act, he managed to kill his wife and possibly his girlfriend as well (car crash, his fault due to drunken rage).  He was a real beauty, that one.

If you've got the artists, the ganja won't be far away; it never is.  They know it doesn't make them better artists, they just like getting hammered.

NASA's Ganja Helmet GHB01 may not exactly have been invented yet but space needs one of those.

Wow, man.  Look at all the fuckin' stars.

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