Posted on 01/23/2022 12:10:10 PM PST by BenLurkin
...NASA awarded 18 teams a total of $450,000 for their concepts for innovative food production technology that produces safe, acceptable, palatable, nutritious food products that are stable and high quality, while minimizing necessary resource inputs...10 international teams for their winning submissions. NASA’s supporting partner of the challenge, the Methuselah Foundation, sponsored two $25,000 awards to international teams...
NASA now invites both new and existing teams to enter Phase 2, which will require teams to build and demonstrate prototypes of their designs and produce food for judging. Interested participants from the United States can compete in Phase 2 for part of a prize purse up to $1 million.
The Deep Space Food Challenge asks competitors to create a food production technology, system, or approach that could potentially be integrated into a complete food system to sustain a crew of four on a three-year deep space mission. Everything needed to store, prepare and deliver food to the crew, including production, processing, transport, consumption, and disposal of waste should be considered. Proposed technologies such as plant growth systems, manufactured food products, and ready-to-eat solutions combined could provide the future crews with a variety of options that would provide the needed daily nutrition.
In Phase 1, NASA’s judges grouped U.S. submissions based on the food they envisioned producing. Among the designs were a variety of systems that ranged from complex to very simple. Teams proposed technologies to produce ready-to-eat foods such as bread, as well as dehydrated powders that could be processed into food products. Other technologies involved cultivated plants and fungi or engineered food such as cultured meat cells, all of which could be grown or produced by the crew on deep space missions. Details about the winning submissions and teams can be found on the challenge website.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
Did you just take a dump or is diner ready?
There was another Sci-Fi movie called “Silent Running” that reminded me of this issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p69lEMn0I8k
I have a feeling the solution will have to do with microbes that can be grown in dark, hot-houses.
Spam...
When they run out, just eat each other...
LOL. I just mentioned “Silent Running”. Good Sci-Fi movie that almost no one remembers.
A deep space food source using the best technology is doomed to failure. Just one damn bacteria or virus that will harm your food source kills the mission. Even if the spacecraft were totally free of pathogens a food source
have benevolent bacteria to survive. They do mutate. They can become pathogenic.
A self contained environment of limited diversity is doomed to failure. Just ask the Irish that survived the “Potato Famine.”
You don't have sunlight in space? Have you heard of a certain bit of technology called a "window"?
This! Just send more tasty gluten-free astronuts!
Muslim outreach means all space food will be halal.
Just N95 masks and some boosters, should do it.
A great movie with Bruce Dern as a good guy! Thanks for reminding me of the title!
What a great memory my friend.....as a kid I ate a ton of those things. Lol
I’ve thought about it too, and I have some ideas, but no real way to test any of them.
I’m a plant breeder. I have a bean variety that’s everbearing. Where most beans stop producing if the pods get too ripe, this one just keeps pumping them out. Let them ripen to where the pods start to change color, but haven’t started to dry, for maximum protein with minimal mess.
(Dry pods would shatter and become a safety hazard in zero-G.)
As an added bonus, this variety doesn’t cause nearly as much gas as most beans, and they taste more like beef than beans.
Another breeder I know works with air potatoes. These have a similar food-value as regular potatoes, but the spuds form all along the vines. I’m pretty sure that would give you more productivity in a small space, and you wouldn’t need to worry about the spuds being exposed to light. The lines he’s breeding don’t turn toxic no matter how much light they get.
Combine beans with potatoes, and you get a complete protein.
There’s more. I used to fill entire notebooks with ideas for self-sufficient space colonies. But life happened, and I don’t even know if I still have those anymore.
Maybe an improved Tang maker?
Well actually Bruce Dern was sort of a psychopathic killer in that movie but who’s counting?
Like instant breakfast 3 packets of stuff to a glass of milk
A simpler, cleaner more honest time to be sure.
Glad I lived it.
“Silent Running”
I cried when the little robot died.....broke my heart
Tang was good stuff. Ranks up there with spiced apple cider as an instant drink.
Anyone else stay up all night to watch The Moon Landing? Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were during my elementary thru high school years and we were pretty much entranced and obsessed with everything space program. I think many if not most adults were as well.
Blast it though! I want some Tang!
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