Live data from Hacker News

We can mine asteroids for space food

cambridge.org

181–190 of 216 posts

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#181

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#182

I 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.

Voyager, with with deflection nukes.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#183

"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…

Plants feed on oxidized compounds, i.e. water, carbon dioxide and dinitrogen, plus solar energy. Because carbon dioxide and dinitrogen are very volatile they must be taken from atmosphere. Reduced organic compounds, like hydrocarbons, are not food for plants, but for fungi or similar organisms, which, like humans, need only dioxygen from the atmosphere. There already are genetically-modified fungi that can produce th…

Do plants take nitrogen from the atmosphere? There's plenty of it available, but my understanding was that molecular nitrogen likes being molecular nitrogen and is difficult to react into a useful form.

If plants took nitrogen from the atmosphere, there would be no issue of fixing nitrogen in the ground. But instead, that's a huge issue. We also provide nitrogen fertilizer, which is another way of getting it into the ground. Why would we do that?

And similarly, I was pretty sure that most plants got their hydrogen and oxygen from water, which they draw out of the ground with special, purpose-dedicated organs called "roots". Their stylized interaction with the air is carbon dioxide in, molecular oxygen out. That's a source of carbon and maybe a little oxygen. The atmosphere doesn't even contain any significant amount of hydrogen.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#184
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. Doesn't technological innovation often make things cheaper? Is this a distinction without a difference, or am I missing something?

Uhm. "cheaper than before" usually yes. But we are talking about different production methods, maybe hydroponics could never be cheaper than growing stuff in dirt because the production method can be optimized only so much. An "advanced" (different) production methods is not inherently cheaper than a "traditional" method.

Hydroponics usually isn't competing on cost, it's competing on other axes, such as having a greater amount of control. Just the same as greenhouses vs growing in the open. Farming is mostly about dealing with or preventing everything that could go wrong.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#186

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…

[dead]

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#187
post #26
post #4

I wonder if it would be possible for e.g. asteroid material to work as an indirect source of nutrition? I.e. carry a specialized yeast on board that can "eat" the asteroid, and, sort of like sourdough, use the yeast's excess growth as food for humans... Sounds nasty now that I say it out loud haha.

This is very close to the subject of the article. In the following quotation, "consortia" means (I think) globs of algae: > After comparing the experimental pyrolysis breakdown products, which were able to be converted to biomass using a consortia, it was hypothesized that equivalent chemicals found on asteroids could also be converted to biomass with the same nutritional content as the pyrolyzed products. This study…

I wanted to paste the very same paragraph and bring up my own dream (for which I hope someone is working hard).

I am a Trekkie. I dream of the day that (in the future, unfortunately far beyond my lifespan) someone will create a Replicator[0] and people will be able to order a burger with a side of fries, a large soda drink to wash it down, and it will be full of vitamins and useful nutrients (minus the garbage/sugar) (or any food from any culture on the planet what will give them the flavor but not the diarrhea)("I wonder how a cockroach tastes").

[0]: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Replicator

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants feed on oxidized compounds, i.e. water, carbon dioxide and dinitrogen, plus solar energy. Because carbon dioxide and dinitrogen are very volatile they must be taken from atmosphere. Reduced organic compounds, like hydrocarbons, are not food for plants, but for fungi or similar organisms, which, like humans, need only dioxygen from the atmosphere. There already are genetically-modified fungi that can produce th…

Do plants take nitrogen from the atmosphere? There's plenty of it available, but my understanding was that molecular nitrogen likes being molecular nitrogen and is difficult to react into a useful form. If plants took nitrogen from the atmosphere, there would be no issue of fixing nitrogen in the ground. But instead, that's a huge issue. We also provide nitrogen fertilizer, which is another way of getting it into the…

Plants in the strictest sense, i.e. the terrestrial descendants of green algae, or even in some wider senses, e.g. all green plants or all eukaryotes that have chloroplasts whose origin is in a primary symbiosis or even all eukaryotes with chloroplasts, cannot take nitrogen from the atmosphere by themselves.

Nevertheless, some plants have symbionts that are various kinds of bacteria and which can take nitrogen from the air. The most important of these plants are the legumes, i.e. beans, peas, lentils and all their close relatives.

The ancestor of the chloroplasts, which are the parts of the plant cells that capture the solar energy, were free-living blue-green algae a.k.a. cyanobacteria, which had been able to take nitrogen from the atmosphere for billions of years.

However during the integration of the chloroplasts into the nucleate cells of the plants, when they have lost their ability to live independently, the chloroplasts have been simplified and among the lost features was the ability to take nitrogen from air. Thus the plants do not have this ability and they have remained dependent for nitrogen on bacteria that either live independently or in symbiosis with plants.

Before humans have started to convert nitrogen from the air into ammonia, for fertilizers and other applications, all organic nitrogen came ultimately also from the air, through the blue-green algae or through other kinds of bacteria.

The nitrogen content of natural rocks is negligible. All the rocks with nitrogen, e.g. saltpeter, come from the decomposition of bodies or excretions of living beings.

In all planets that are not cold enough for ammonia to become a liquid or an ice, the nitrogen is almost entirely in the atmosphere.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#189

"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…

I'm extremely amused (and totally unsurprised) that the military has palatability requirements for soldier chow

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#190
post #79
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?

Its definitely natural
Post reply on HN