Asteroids which enter a planet's atmosphere will probably yield even better food, because they will be a little meteor.
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We can mine asteroids for space food
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Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#22Asteroids which enter a planet's atmosphere will probably yield even better food, because they will be a little meteor.
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Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#23I 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.
That's the actual plan. It's not explsined in the introduction, but in the middle of the article they explain that they will food bacterias with the proceced material, and later people will eat the bacteria.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#24I 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.
Problem is that the vast majority of material is metal, so your digester needs a way to saturate the metal to reach the CHON, and and then extract the digester. Is that really better than extracting the CHON directly and then processing it?
that depends so much on the kind of asteroid i thought.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#25This 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!
I can't decide if this sounds more like a startup idea or a proposal from the coal lobby.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#26I 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 is a mathematical exercise that explores the potential food yield that could be produced from these methodologies.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of a single reason we wouldn't just eat algae sludge or synthetic protein mash or something else. Farming is not a space- or weight- optimized process.
Isn’t there a requirement for lots of fibre in the diet as well as vitamins, protein, carbohydrates and fats. As well as the psychological effect of eating good food and not mush.
Soluble fiber is broken down partially in the gut by bacteria/fermentation. Lots remains. Insoluble fiber passes through mostly unchanged.
You see where this is going.
You need only minimal new inputs and the rest can be recycled.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#28Title should really be "How we might be able to ..."
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of a single reason we wouldn't just eat algae sludge or synthetic protein mash or something else. Farming is not a space- or weight- optimized process.
Isn’t there a requirement for lots of fibre in the diet as well as vitamins, protein, carbohydrates and fats. As well as the psychological effect of eating good food and not mush.
If I'm in a fragile metal bubble in the deep black vastness of space, the texture of my nutrisludge will be the least existential of my worries.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#30Asteroids which enter a planet's atmosphere will probably yield even better food, because they will be a little meteor.
because they will be a little meteor, right?
How did you comet o that conclusion?
And a hungry mouth will approach: "please sir, armageddon some more?"