KID STUFF : I Could’ve Had a Space Tomato

Remember the space tomatoes?

NASA, with the help of about 3.3 million schoolchildren, has squeezed the experiment for all it’s worth and the results are in: Seeds can survive in space for long periods with little or no change in the resulting plant.

This development disappointed students who hankered for killer mutants, or at least something more like V-8, the agency noted.

The experiment, named SEEDS (Space Exposed Experiment Developed for Students) flew about 12.5 million tomato seeds aboard a NASA satellite for six years. After the crew of the shuttle Columbia retrieved them in January, 1990, the seeds were distributed to classrooms around the world for comparison with a control group of Earth-grown tomatoes.

The 8,000 usable student reports returned to NASA suggest that space seeds germinated slightly faster, the agency says, but the Earth-based seedlings caught up with their space counterparts after about a month. Tests of acidity, root growth, tissue culturing and other factors showed no differences in the two tomato harvests.

One space tomato won a blue ribbon at an Oregon fair, but others didn’t make it.

In addition to the ravages of hailstorms, late freezes, heat, mice, moles and worms, there was rotten luck.

As one second-grader wrote: “Here are my results. My Earth seed did not grow. My space seed grew but it fell off my desk. It died.”

Ah, science.