Ten years after the Russians did it, NASA finally produces lettuce in space
Lots of news stories today about yesterday’s lettuce feast on ISS, where a Japanese and two NASA astronauts chowed down on lettuce grown in a NASA-built space greenhouse, ten years after the Russians did it with the American-built and still working LADA greenhouse.
Almost all the stories below, however, fail to note that earlier effort, and instead make the false claim that this NASA experiment is the first to grow lettuce in space.
- ABC: NASA astronauts take their first bites of space-grown lettuce at International Space Station
- Popular Science: Space-Grown Lettuce Tastes “Awesome,” Astronauts Say
- NPR: This Salad Is Outta This World: Astronauts Eat Greens Grown In Space
- CBS: Astronauts chow down on first salad grown in space
- New York Times: Growing Vegetables in Space, NASA Astronauts Tweet Their Lunch
- Sputnik: First time ever: ISS crew eats food grown in outer space
- NBC: One Small Step for Veggies: Astronauts Eat Lettuce Grown in Space
- The Guardian: Nasa astronauts take first bites of lettuce grown in space: ‘Tastes like arugula’
- Washington Post: Astronauts just ate space-grown lettuce for the first time ever
- Motherboard: Astronauts dine on the first 100% space-grown food
- collectSpace: Astronauts snack on space-grown lettuce for first time (officially)
Only the last article, written at an alternative space news website normally focused on the collection of space memorabilia, gets it right, noting that the Russians did it more than a decade ago and have since then been regularly growing lettuce, peas, and radishes on ISS — and eating them. (They also link to the 2003 Air & Space article I wrote on this very subject.)
Meanwhile, take a scan of all the important mainstream news outlets above, none of whom did the slightest bit of research or fact-checking so they could find out that NASA’s experiment now is not the first, and in fact is more than a decade behind an earlier co-operative effort between the Russians and Utah State University.
This should make you wonder if maybe their other news research is as sloppy.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Not so much sloppy as LAZY! Someone reports that this is a “first” and all these outlets run with the info, as they know it. None of these LAZY folks in the MSM can be bothered to do any actual reporting (you know, fact-checking, asking other sources, getting other quotes; things REAL reporters do).
They are spoon-fed info from the democrats and aren’t used to getting the story right, just repeating what their masters tell them. Cowards! Lazy, useless mouthpieces of the socialist left.
I am a pilot and when the news reports aviation stories it almost ALWAYS has details wrong. If it doesn’t get what you know right, how can you trust it when you don’t know…
“This should make you wonder if maybe their (all) other news research is as sloppy.”
Yes, it is.
I am perhaps more partisan than most people but this is hardly a problem confined to our reporter friends to the left :)
Agreed.
Oh, but if it’s on the internet, then it must be true, right?