Interview with Crew Commander on HI-SEAS IV Mission. Subject: Bioponics

Allow me to set the backdrop on this. I toddled across this interview from the Australian with a crew commander for the HI-SEAS IV mission, which was an experiment where six people lived on the side of a volcano in Hawaii, under a dome, for a year in order to simulate the Martian environment.

You can read the (short) interview yourself, but the part I found incredibly interesting was that the crew commander was a soil scientist in normal life. And, they touched on how they managed to feed themselves while simulating such hostile environments (they were each allowed a ten second daily shower, for example).

When was asked how she filled her days, this is what she had to say:

I’m a soil scientist, so I was growing fresh vegetables in the dome with bioponics – sort of like hydroponics, except that it uses diluted human urine, which is full of nutrients.

I introduce to you, folks, a whole new aspect of the hydroponic experiment. But, eh, I think most of us will prefer to stick with water.