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We can mine asteroids for space food

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Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#161

Post by schiffern »

PaulHoule wrote: post #74

From the viewpoint of a space colony food is a renewable resource as after humans “consume” the food the food is now CO2 and other waste products. Martians may vent CO2 but I’d think asteroid colonists would seek to recycle every bit of volatile that they can.

I expect especially resource-limited colonies could eventually use a double hull, with vacuum pumps to actively re-capture leakage.

A standard mechanical vacuum pump can reach 1/1000th of an atmosphere, so in theory this scheme should be able to reduce leak rates to only 1/1000th that of an equivalent single-hull design.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#162

Post by adastra22 »

roughly wrote: post #66
adastra22 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would likely use this “food” to feed more traditional agriculture for human consumption. A better way of positioning it is processing the content of abiotic asteroids into a biological system capable of providing nourishment to astronauts and space colonists.

The article says the cost of feeding one astronaut for one year is around 5,000-160,000 tons of ore per year. My understanding is the rule of thumb is about an order of magnitude nutritional drop off each step - that is, to produce 100cal of meat requires 1000cal of plant food. Bumping those yield estimates, especially the pessimistic end, up by another factor of 10 is just a phenomenal amount of material to process…

Biomass is recycled. You would only need the replacement rate for losses, which would be nonzero not negligible, but much smaller.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#163

Post by jraph »

pests wrote: post #141
ada1981 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people do care about the plants though, such as Jainism. If you draw the line at plants - that's fine, but some others do not and are wondering why you arbitrarily drew that line where you did. Sure some may be joking around but its still a legit concern for some.

From what I understand, Jains are lacto-vegetarian [1]. Vegans draw that line further (because they also don't take milk).

As a human being, if you avoid eating plants, or things that eat plants, you die.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#164

Post by ashoeafoot »

And then once that runs out we will once more turn on each other with the same stoneage instincts and railguns.

Or.

Or we take a brewk. Spend a thousand years fixing what evolution couldnt, turning inward, instead of using up the environment to build ever larger wheel chairs for the sprawling tribal mess.

Maybe that dreams of unchanged infinite growth are a madness in themselves , a madness necessary for now, as we fall apart without surplus. But it cant last forever, either we change or the fever dream burns itself out.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#165

Post by dr_dshiv »

jraph wrote: post #163
pests wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do care about the plants though, such as Jainism. If you draw the line at plants - that's fine, but some others do not and are wondering why you arbitrarily drew that line where you did. Sure some may be joking around but its still a legit concern for some.

From what I understand, Jains are lacto-vegetarian [1]. Vegans draw that line further (because they also don't take milk). As a human being, if you avoid eating plants, or things that eat plants, you die. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Jains don’t eat foods like onions and potatoes. But, so far as I know, this is on account of the bugs that may be harmed when harvesting soil-based plants.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#166

Post by ashoeafoot »

wrp wrote: post #150
Terr_ wrote: post #56

I 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.

> fictional advertisement for such a product in a sci-fi story Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl The artificial food was called CHON.

Part of the gateway trilogy

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#167

Post by avhception »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #164

And then once that runs out we will once more turn on each other with the same stoneage instincts and railguns. Or. Or we take a brewk. Spend a thousand years fixing what evolution couldnt, turning inward, instead of using up the environment to build ever larger wheel chairs for the sprawling tribal mess. Maybe that dreams of unchanged infinite growth are a madness in themselves , a madness necessary for now, as we f…

I think you're right.

I also think convincing the rest of the world will be impossible.

Humans will, like any other life form, stretch to the maximum population possible and then collapse.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#168

Post by consf »

Terr_ wrote: post #56

I 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.

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Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#169

Post by Simon_ORourke »

Animats wrote: post #121

"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…

> Hydroponics already works.

I read something on wired last year on why urban vertical farming never really took off, and one of the reasons was, if I remember, that these kind of environments increase the likelihood of plant disease and the density makes it difficult to arrest any spread.

So, I'm not too sure that hydroponics at scale is completely solved.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#170

Post by consf »

m463 wrote: post #79
Terr_ wrote: post #56

I 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.

Is mined food processed food?

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