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We can mine asteroids for space food

cambridge.org

191–200 of 216 posts

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#191
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

veganism is about reducing suffering to a practical extend. no vegan is ditching transportation or plastic because it may contain by-products of the animal industry... thus if one day we can make food out of minerals, for sure that would be vegan; although i can't see ANY harm done to a fruit tree or a soybean/corn that dries out because of its short life cycle being a 'bad thing' but maybe minerals based food will a…

> veganism is about reducing suffering to a practical extend There is genuine debate around whether plants suffer. The answer seems to be “no,” at least not in a way we’d recognise as suffering. But that ambiguity is more than enough to spawn a movement. Ethically-harvested honey doesn’t harm bees, for instance, and family dairies can blur the line between animal husbandry and petkeeping.

"Ethically" harvested honey means not killing the bees in the process I guess, which is awesome, but there’s still stress induced by removing the food they make and stock for their hives, and the cage around the queen just to be sure she doesn’t go back to the wild. Im not sure how to define ethics anyway but surely I would’t like to be a farm bee, even an ethical one.

Familly diaries also comes with they own sets of abuse forgotten because "they love their cows". At the end it’s always a speechless being exploited to serve the dominant interest.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#192

"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

Well soldiers tend to be armed and trained. Unlike say inmates or school children or hospital patients....

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#193
I for one embrace the brave new world of printed eFood!

Perhaps appliances on your kitchen counter that use electricity and the air (CHON) to product sugar, or protein, or oils, directly and avoiding the whole agricultural, transportation and storage infrastructure. The savings!

Of course our agriculture state economies will collapse - a sort of second 'Dust Bowl'. Perhaps the CHON Bowl?

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#194

I for one embrace the brave new world of printed eFood! Perhaps appliances on your kitchen counter that use electricity and the air (CHON) to product sugar, or protein, or oils, directly and avoiding the whole agricultural, transportation and storage infrastructure. The savings! Of course our agriculture state economies will collapse - a sort of second 'Dust Bowl'. Perhaps the CHON Bowl?

Perhaps ironically the collapse of agricultural state economies would mean considerably less dust since the fields would recover within a few years after not being over farmed.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#196
post #84
post #34

For my Factorio friends out there, this sounds like grounds for a mod that let's you "mine" nutrients in space

The space version of this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SeaBlock

There is one already: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/spaceblock

And a playthrough I enjoyed watching: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqiMv9sOILsrYve0aG200HTQV...

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#197
post #194

I for one embrace the brave new world of printed eFood! Perhaps appliances on your kitchen counter that use electricity and the air (CHON) to product sugar, or protein, or oils, directly and avoiding the whole agricultural, transportation and storage infrastructure. The savings! Of course our agriculture state economies will collapse - a sort of second 'Dust Bowl'. Perhaps the CHON Bowl?

Perhaps ironically the collapse of agricultural state economies would mean considerably less dust since the fields would recover within a few years after not being over farmed.

...until drought.

Apparently there's an algae bloom (right now?) off Madagascar, sterilizing ocean life in the vicinity. Due to South African drought dust blowing into the ocean.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#199

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.

That's good sci fi, meanwhile we're not even sure a human could live on mars for any extended period of time given it has 1/3rd the gravity and may completely fuck up our internal processes such as vision, blood pumping, maintaining bone density, risks of hernia, &c.

We're talking about solving the n+100 problem while we're not even sure n0 is possible. It's cool to talk about terraforming Mars but we fucked up our 100% human compatible system in 200 years of industrialisation, idk if people realise how completely disconnected from reality they sound

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#200
This is straight out of The Heechee Saga! The idea of synthesizing human-edible food from asteroid hydrocarbons is literally what Pohl described with CHON food. Breaking down carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen to create sustenance for ships, stations, even whole planets.

Judging by the study’s data, converting the organic compounds in an asteroid like Bennu could feed thousands of astronauts for decades. Even the lower estimate of 600 astronaut life-years is staggering when you consider how much food we’d otherwise have to launch from Earth (even with SpaceX’s cost reductions, Elon). If we can refine these processes to work efficiently and reliably, which is a very big if, we’re looking at a future where asteroid mining could fuel spaceships AND feed the crew without being tethered to Earth

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