I bet we mine asteroids for minerals-to-sell before we do for minerals-to-eat.
We can mine asteroids for space food
151–160 of 216 posts
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every* food is processed food the amount of processing varies.
Does that apply to to self-harvested apples and berries, too? Is washing them with water a process which changes their structure and composition of nutrients? Less proteins because of less bugs and worms?
They’re selectively bred for one thing, and they start changing the moment you pick them. Just sitting on your counter changes a piece of fruit. Touching a berry with your finger introduces millions of tiny bioreactors onto its surface, some will go to work breaking cell walls, fermenting, fighting with the local and antecedent microscopic flora, and so on.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#153I suppose the next step beyond vegetarianism and veganism will be mineralism: Food using molecules certified never to have been part of any known living organism. I remember there was a fictional advertisement for such a product in a sci-fi story, but not exactly where.
I think such a technical advancement would parallel a moral one. I’ve been vegan 25 years and would be happy to silence the “but what about plants” people once and for all.
> "but what about plants"
I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals -- I'm one because I hate plants.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#154I suppose the next step beyond vegetarianism and veganism will be mineralism: Food using molecules certified never to have been part of any known living organism. I remember there was a fictional advertisement for such a product in a sci-fi story, but not exactly where.
Bruce Sterling's /Islands in the Net/ has a character that is this kind of vegan (forget what they call it). He finds the idea of agricultural food disgusting and only eats sterile synthetic food. Edit: had the wrong Sterling book.
I've been vegan since 2002 and would be down to go on a fully synthetic vegan diet. I used to be a heavy consumer of Soylent
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#155I am a layperson for astrochemistry but IIRC comets have much higher hydrocarbon content by an order of magnitude or more (and obviously more water, fewer metals to contend with for extraction energy requirements). Anyone have more insights? Did I miss mention of comets in my skim of the paper? Ps usually HN not a punfest, but kudos for the Starmite(tm) @andai
I think comets are significantly harder to get a hold of; they're in long-period orbits, and changing their trajectories - or even catching up with them! - is significantly harder than catching something that circles the sun inside the orbit of Jupiter.
But could you use the hydrocarbons on the comet as fuel to change the orbit to a desirable one?
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#156I bet we mine asteroids for minerals-to-sell before we do for minerals-to-eat.
why not minerals-to-sell-to-eat?
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there will never ever be such guarantee that could be taken seriously. How do you know that 2 star generations ago (so say roughly 10 billion years ago), in our previous neighborhood, a massive hypernova wiped out advanced civilization and you are now just consuming molecules that were once part of sentient living being, even with IQ much higher than yours? Nah, you can never be 100% sure, its one of those situat…
The phrasing "any known living organism" already excludes that. Even if it didn't, a guarantee in product marketing is a promise and quasi-legal committment, not a certification of objective universal cosmic truth. In some cases, everybody knows that statistically there will be at least one case where the guarantee is broken, but that doesn't void anything.
On that premise, knowing too much might literally starve you.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#158The title is "How we can mine asteroids for space food" not "We can mine asteroids for space food." This seems like a pretty major difference to me on a site that suggests against editorializing titles.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#159This reminds me of US research that was done during the Cold War about surviving a nuclear winter by producing food products directly from petroleum. It's theoretically possible and you could survive on it as a supplemental source of calories. I think optimizing farming for space flight is probably better, especially if you have always-on solar power (as you do anywhere near the sun) or nuclear power. Hydrocarbons fr…
Apparently producing margarine from coal was actually done during WWII. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine?wprov=sfti1#Coal_but... https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/brave-new-bu... Edit: The more I read on this the more doubtful I’m becoming that this was actually produced at scale. If anyone has a better source I’d love to see it!
No it couldn't have been, from wikipedia:
> The process required at least 60 kilograms of coal per kilogram of synthetic butter.[23] That industrial process was discontinued after WWII due to its inefficiency.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#160"but there are substantial areas of future work." Well, yes. Most plant mass comes from air and water, not the ground. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen all come from the atmosphere. This is why farms don't dig themselves into the ground. If air and water can be made from asteroids, that's most of the raw materials problem by quantity. Hydroponics already works. Direct synthesis of food from hydrocarbons has nev…
Their plan is to use the asteriod material to feed bacterias (it's hidden in the introduction, but explained in the main text). The advantage of using something more complex than air and water is that he bacterias can get energy from it, interad of using light like plants. I guess it's more similar to the method used to cultivate fongus. --- Anyway, you made me wonder if we can feed plats with sugar instead of light.…
Variations of that idea definitely work. Light is optional for plants with adequate nutrient uptake from mediums like agar.