Posted on 09/25/2019 7:58:13 PM PDT by BenLurkin
With bugs, algae and other resource-efficient foods we could feed one million people on Mars within a century of arriving there. Scientists even invented a martian diet.
Cannon and colleagues modeled the food needs of a human population on Mars that grows to one million over about a hundred Earth years through a combination of immigration and reproduction. Though the settlement would need to import a lot of food at the start, it could transition to an entirely Martian-grown diet in about a century with the right food choices, they found.
The major limiting factor is space — or rather, the ability to create spaces suitable for growing food. On Earth, the amount of available arable land restricts our ability to grow food, whether plants, animals or something else. On Mars, we’d have to create these spaces — enclosed, pressurized and heated structures. For efficiency’s sake, a Martian society would need to choose food sources that are high in nutrients and calories relative to the space they need to grow.
Traditionally farmed animal products and certain plants need a lot of resources and may be impractical on Mars, Cannon says. But that doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing variety in Martian diets. His team’s models include three main categories of food sources: plant-based foods, edible insects and “cellular agriculture” — protein-rich foods like algae and lab-grown meats, dairy and eggs that we can grow from cells.
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This includes eating plants like beans, tomato and potato, as well as GMO products modified to include more nutrients and grow more sustainably. A number of companies today make insect-based products — whether that’s whole crickets or powdered insects to use as flour — that aspiring Martians can sample as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at astronomy.com ...
Using solar power, right?
No coal. No fossil fuels. No nuclear power. No wind farms. No dams.
Can I pick a few hundred of them?
All aboard, Democrats! One way trip for free!
I’m sure there would be coyotes bringing illegals to Mars to vote in Mars elections, and to do jobs Martians won’t be willing to do. (sarc)
You move to a commune on Mars and you would be property of “the State”. Every comrade would be expect to “pull his weight” on the farm. You “resist” and you are cast out into a harsh environment on your own.
You would be dependent on them for your very oxygen you breathe, every drop of water. Every crumb of food.
No thanks.
No magnetic field protecting them from cosmic rays, almost no atmosphere, very little water, for several years you would be solely reliant on billion dollar resupply rockets from earth for everything.
What could go wrong?
Yet they will bring bedbugs with them.
Maybe we could send all the liberals there. Most of them would be thrown out of the airlock in a week.
All homes would be sub-martian, so it would actually be quite sustainable as long as you had bioengineered algae to turn your CO2 to O2 and a water source.
All power on this planet is derived from solar because the sun is the only energy producer (nuclear fusion). It takes a long time for the sun to grow plants that are eaten by animals that die and become biomass that eventually turns into oil. Much faster to turn photons directly into electron flow.
Maybe we feed bugs and algae to all the starving people on Earth first to see if it works. Would be a hell of a project and it would save millions of lives.
I like to point out whenever possible that if science can make Mars livable, science can probably also do the same with Earth, and we already have people here to staff the projects.
The man behind the study wants to do that.
There are 160 million democrats in the country. 1 million is not going to make a difference.
Well, if we send them all..and there is only enough food for 1 million the problem solves itself.
The ones left will have to work their asses off, so they will come back as conservatives.
If you bring potato beetles I will kill you.
Stuoidest thing I ever read.
Riiiight. Hey scientists, figure out how global warming always pushes its self out 10 years!
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