Greenhouses for Mars
When humans go to the moon or Mars, they'll probably take plants with them. NASA-supported researchers are learning how greenhouses work on other planets:
"When you get to the idea of growing plants on the moon, or on Mars," explains molecular biologist Rob Ferl, director of Space Agriculture Biotechnology Research and Education at the University of Florida, "then you have to consider the idea of growing plants in as reduced an atmospheric pressure as possible."
There are two reasons. First, it'll help reduce the weight of the supplies that need to be lifted off the earth. Even air has mass.
Second, Martian and lunar greenhouses must hold up in places where the atmospheric pressures are, at best, less than one percent of Earth-normal. Those greenhouses will be easier to construct and operate if their interior pressure is also very low -- perhaps only one-sixteenth of Earth normal.
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