Velikovsky hypothesized that the manna of the ancient Israelites was hydrocarbons from meteors magically transformed into carbohydrate. It's good to see that his important research is being continued ;-)
We can mine asteroids for space food
81–90 of 216 posts
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#82I 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.
This actually makes sense to me in terms of logical coherence. I understand and support people who follow ethically-motivated diets but the fact is a line is always drawn somewhere. Plants are alive. Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s?
I don’t think we’re good at making claims about where particular organisms sit along a gradient of consciousness we can’t even properly define.
I like to imagine other civilizations in the universe might use this basic distinction to evaluate how sophisticated a culture is — do they still needlessly eradicate life for more convenient consumption? Akin to asking, are they still a pre-warp civilization?
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#83Earlier 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…
I didn't read the paper in depth, just skimmed it, but it seems like their assumption is that the astronauts will be eating some sort of microbe slurry; so I think that the cost includes only that, not using microbes to feed higher-order life or growing plants.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#84For 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
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#85I 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.
This actually makes sense to me in terms of logical coherence. I understand and support people who follow ethically-motivated diets but the fact is a line is always drawn somewhere. Plants are alive. Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s? I don’t think we’re good at making claims about where particular organisms sit along a gradient of consciousness we can’t even properly define. I like to imagine oth…
I draw my line based on units of consciousness that I half-arbitrarily assign to different animals. I think most people do so, the assignment seems to be a sort of emergent property of the local society within which any individual is brought up.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#86I 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.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#87I 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.
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.
Obviously some plants die and others don’t in harvesting.
Mostly the “even broccoli screams when you rip it from the ground” is a joke more often than actual trolling.
I think the valid moral argument is that as a result of modern agricultural practices substantially more animals are killed than animal husbandry. Usually the counter-arguments involves moving the moral goal posts by valuing farm animals over “pests and insects”, or blaming the modern agricultural practices and suggesting organic farming cures those harms.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#88Wouldn’t it be simpler to do what the Martian did? Bring low mass items: seed and bacteria. Mine high mass items: dirt and water. Concentrate sunlight
Where exactly do you mine "dirt" from on a planet that hasn't had any sort of biosphere to create it? Dirt isn't just "stuff you're standing on" - it contains a lot of stuff that's been decomposing.
Plus, Mars is full of chemical compounds that we suspect are pretty terrible for you, and the Moon's regolith is full of jagged, sharp bits that aren't good for you or the plants they're growing in.
Mining "dirt" from most of the places we can get to would do as good of a job of growing food as grinding up your windows & plumbing.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#89I 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.
This actually makes sense to me in terms of logical coherence. I understand and support people who follow ethically-motivated diets but the fact is a line is always drawn somewhere. Plants are alive. Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s? I don’t think we’re good at making claims about where particular organisms sit along a gradient of consciousness we can’t even properly define. I like to imagine oth…
In my book about distant civilizations they eradicate all life except the forms that are able to function as you described. Because it’s pointless to just avoid participating in a meat grinder that life itself is naturally. The point is to stop anything that suffers from suffering. They dream about visiting every world and eradicating unascended lifes there for that same reason.
Re: We can mine asteroids for space food
#90I 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.
This actually makes sense to me in terms of logical coherence. I understand and support people who follow ethically-motivated diets but the fact is a line is always drawn somewhere. Plants are alive. Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s? I don’t think we’re good at making claims about where particular organisms sit along a gradient of consciousness we can’t even properly define. I like to imagine oth…
> Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s?
A rabbit probably ate a lot of carrots, you are better off eating just the carrot directly if you want to reduce the killing :-)