NASA’s Gotta Step Up their Side Hustle
A Dutch scientist found two baby earthworms wriggling around in soil that is supposed to replicate the surface of Mars. But we’re still pretty far away from gardening on the red planet.
For now, scientists don’t have access to real Martian soil. So Wieger Wamelink, biologist at Wageningen University, bought a simulation from NASA at a hefty $2,500 for about 220 pounds (he created a crowdfunding campaign to help with the costs). The U.S. space agency fetched that dirt from a volcano in Hawaii and the Mojave desert, then sterilized it to copy the lifeless Martian environment. Wamelink and his research team then put the simulation soil through a Martian colony scenario.
We’re missing the bigger narrative here, let me fill you in. Back in December Trump signed a executive order to get back into Space:
“President Donald Trump signed the ‘White House Space Policy Directive 1’ on Monday, pressing NASA to put people on the moon for the first time in 45 years.”
But….
“Funding for the agency has dropped from nearly 4.5% of the federal budget in 1966 to less than 0.5% today.”
So Trump tells NASA to get back into space with no budget increase, does NASA just sit around and wait for congressional funding? HA! Our friends at NASA channel their inner side hustle by packing Earth soil and putting Martian labels on it. Love it! Oh, looking for Martian soil for earthworms to get down and dirty, not a problem we have the highest quality dirt on the market. Hold on one sec while we shovel this sand form Hawaii and the Sahara, spray it with some lysol and send it over in buckets with official stickers on them. But $2,500 bucks, I mean Come Onnn NASA. Elon’s laughing in his electric semi right now. If your gonna go through all this effort to call Earth dirt “Martian” you need to put a serious price tag on it, add at least two zeros and then we’ll be talking.
So earthworms were able to reproduce in sterile earth soil…
Matt Damon already proved that. We’re gonna need a little more before we give the ‘OK’ for humans to take the seven month trip. Microbes are true pioneers of survival, they have already proven they can adapt to live in the most inhabitable areas of Earth. From the dark depths of the ocean to the bitter unforgiving poles. They simply get it done and find ways to prosper, if you think about it at one point we were all a single microorganism and they figured it out. Its been a hell of a ride, so lets load up Elon’s totally normal looking Falcon Heavy rocket with a couple trillion microbes and let em fly.
