If you’ve seen The Martian, you know just how important a role potatoes played in (spoiler?) bringing titular Martian Mark Watney home from the red planet.
The International Potato Center (a real organization), decided to do some research on whether or not potatoes can be grown on Mars.
While it doesn’t look like they used human feces like in The Martian, they found that under similar conditions, you can grow a potato on Mars. Who says science hasn’t done anything for us?
The researchers used special fertilizers, some earth soil, and environmentally modified soil to mimic conditions on Mars. And to quote the movie: surprise! They were able to make them grow.
That means you can add another food to the list that can be grown on this red soiled planet. That list includes tomatoes, rye, garden cress, radishes, and peas. Little kids aren’t going to like it, but a vegetarian diet is definitely sustainable if we decide to leave our home planet.
The original research wasn’t actually tied into the movie, but after the publicity the movie gave potatoes and science a ton of publicity, there was no way an organization made up of potato scientists weren’t going to try this out.
One small step for spuds. One giant leap for french fries.
i thought science came out just after the movie debut that matt damon’s character would have died if he used the other people’s feces and not just his own