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We can mine asteroids for space food

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Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#51

Post by pfdietz »

api wrote: post #2

This 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…

The British company ICI had a product called Pruteen, which was made by growing bacteria on methanol produced from natural gas as the energy source. It was intended as cattle feed; if people ate it there would be an excess of purines which could lead to gout.

Pruteen was followed by the more successful product Quorn, which is made from a fungus grown in fermentation tanks with glucose as the energy source. It is intended for human consumption as a meat substitute.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#52

Post by josefresco »

perihelions wrote: post #40
twodave wrote: 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.

We're the scary aliens other ETI's make sci-fi horror movies about. " ...and they wield GREY GOO that turns *everything* it touches into nutrients they lap up in their flappy appendages... "

I could have done just fine without learning about "grey goo" today thank you very much.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#53

Post by ttyprintk »

jamieplex wrote: post #50

I know this whole thing is just a thought experiment, but I had to wonder about not only the cost of all of this per "astronaut" (off the cuff - $10M per person per year), but the massive amount of energy needed for "life and food production". Just a single line item on my list of "doubtful, but not impossible" is the three quarters of a million Joules of energy needed to melt just 1000 grams of asteroid ice inside y…

If we can talk long term, then a survey of the asteroid belt would reveal two special bands of density: close to ice, and close to gold. Returning a gold asteroid to Earth orbit has straightforward economics. Build a small cylinder or globe around an ice asteroid and melt just enough of it to kickstart the greenhouse effect.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#54

Post by Symmetry »

api wrote: post #2

This 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…

ALLFED[1] is an organization doing research into how we could keep most everyone alive if we have a decade of winder after a super volcano, asteroid impact, or nuclear winter. Processes that convert hydrocarbons into calories are certainly in their playbook.

[1]https://allfed.info/

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#55

Post by bee_rider »

ttyprintk wrote: post #53
jamieplex wrote: post #50

I know this whole thing is just a thought experiment, but I had to wonder about not only the cost of all of this per "astronaut" (off the cuff - $10M per person per year), but the massive amount of energy needed for "life and food production". Just a single line item on my list of "doubtful, but not impossible" is the three quarters of a million Joules of energy needed to melt just 1000 grams of asteroid ice inside y…

If we can talk long term, then a survey of the asteroid belt would reveal two special bands of density: close to ice, and close to gold. Returning a gold asteroid to Earth orbit has straightforward economics. Build a small cylinder or globe around an ice asteroid and melt just enough of it to kickstart the greenhouse effect.

Gold is only really valuable because we agreed it is; it has industrial applications (good conductor, malleable) but mostly it is priced based on its prettiness. If we were suddenly totally awash in gold, I guess the price would go down.

It is fairly dense, so maybe the best application for gold if you have lots of it in space (and not many morals) might be to threaten to drop it on people/cities/whatever.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#56

Post by Terr_ »

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.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#58

Post by christophilus »

bee_rider wrote: post #55
ttyprintk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can talk long term, then a survey of the asteroid belt would reveal two special bands of density: close to ice, and close to gold. Returning a gold asteroid to Earth orbit has straightforward economics. Build a small cylinder or globe around an ice asteroid and melt just enough of it to kickstart the greenhouse effect.

Gold is only really valuable because we agreed it is; it has industrial applications (good conductor, malleable) but mostly it is priced based on its prettiness. If we were suddenly totally awash in gold, I guess the price would go down. It is fairly dense, so maybe the best application for gold if you have lots of it in space (and not many morals) might be to threaten to drop it on people/cities/whatever.

> If we were suddenly totally awash in gold, I guess the price would go down.

Yes, and this has happened at least twice in history: when Europeans discovered the Americas and moved a bunch of gold into Europe, and when Europeans discovered World Wars and moved a bunch of gold back to the Americas.

Re: We can mine asteroids for space food

#60

Post by mkl »

speerer wrote: post #26
twodave wrote: 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…

Yes: "A group of symbiotic microbes" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consortium#English
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