Growing space food faster

[PB666]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151103100250.htm

Rather poorly written article. Bottom line is a desert member of the nightshade family of plants grows fast makes lots of seed mass and little flowering mass.

Problem is ......are the seeds edible and or nutritious?

[RainDreamer]

Nightshades? I am not a botanist, but I don't think they are edible...

Eitherway, can't we genetically engineer some space potato or similar high calories food?

[SuperFastJellyfish]

It's funny you mention potatoes. Potatoes are nightshade.

[PB666]

It's funny you mention potatoes. Potatoes are nightshade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae

its a big family of fruiting plants

Tomato, eggplant, tomatillos, pepino also chili peppers

[Alias72]

So long story short we have found super potatoes. Mark Whatney would be proud.

[RuBisCO]

Well it's not the plant its self it's that it leads to clues on how to deactivate a plant's immune system, which won't be needed (ideally) in space, thus increasing the plant's efficiency as it can put more of its energy into growing and growing seeds. The difference between the "nude mouse" version of the plant and the normal immune system functioning wild type is double the seed mass production!

The best space food production in my opinion would be one from an engineered hydrogenotrophic or syntrophy multiculture. Have a bioreactor that takes in CO2 (scrubbed from crew air) and Hydrogen (produced from electrolysis) and waste water, and out comes starch, fatty oils, and protein. The whole process could end up being more efficient than photosynthesis, be light independent and take up a lot less space and mass. It would look something like this:

OK so with multiple cultures producing protein, starch and oil separately and with some processing, we could make synthetic tofu, pasta and oils with ease, making synthetic ketchup which would be essential would be more complected, but hypothetically we could have a bioreactor oozing out jalapeno slime if needed.

[prophet_01]

Who wants to eat that?! I don't. Efficiency is not going to change the fact that peoole don't like to eat slime of different colours and density...

A friend of mine worked on ships for a long time and has been at sea for something like 1-6 month on each turn. He always says that food is the single most important thing to keep the morale stable. Guess what happens if you put them into an even smaller metal box without outdoor areas and serve them nothing but that stuff...

[Tex_NL]

Who wants to eat that?! I don't. Efficiency is not going to change the fact that peoole don't like to eat slime of different colours and density...

A friend of mine worked on ships for a long time and has been at sea for something like 1-6 month on each turn. He always says that food is the single most important thing to keep the morale stable. Guess what happens if you put them into an even smaller metal box without outdoor areas and serve them nothing but that stuff...

True. For a large part we eat with our eyes and our minds. Even if some protein paste contains all the energy and nutrients we need it will get boring pretty fast.

However here in the Netherlands (other countries probably have something similar) we have a proverb that says: "Honger maakt rauwe bonen zoet." Hunger turns raw beans sweet. If you don't have any other options you will eat anything.

[RainDreamer]

That does no good for morale though. Unless we are in a survival situation, a variety of foods is usually better.

[andrewas]

There are people who can endure those conditions, but it would be better to use these nutritious slimes as feedstock for a food printer. Powdered flavoring would cost very little mass, and if you have adequate control over the texture, the product should be palatable.

[PB666]

Sounds like we need space cows, heh-heh

This is not a problem, IMO, there is one member of the family you will need to grow . . . . chile peppers, in space your food taste bland. Also humans need very little salt, so some sort of artificial salt is needed. Sugar is relatively easy to make. Meat is over rated, but you can make jerky on earth and simply ship it to space.

[peadar1987]

I'm guessing it is completely possible to produce bland, flavourless nutrient gloop with all your body needs to survive, then add flavourings to it using small quantities of synthesised chemicals. Texture can be added using some sort of food printer.

Will it be as good as the real thing? Probably not, but it will be a heck of a lot more interesting and tasty than just gruel, while still providing a healthy level of nutrients.

[prophet_01]

There is also lab grown meat... the research is just at the begining right now, but considering how much water and room would be required to produce meat the regular way, it seems fairly unlikely that there will be space cows.

There is a lab in the netherlands that grows muscle cells to research the potential for food production. An entire steak grown like that is off limits right now and would also cost as much as a sports car... but some day, who knows?

Even though the idea of a cow in zero-gravity makes me laugh, I think it's more likely to see steaks grown in a tank some day. An entire station full of cows seems like a huge waste of ressources, especially since the cows likely need gravity to build up muscles or even stay healthy.

Edited November 5, 2015 by prophet_01

[RainDreamer]

Well, food printing sounds like a good idea. All the nutrients in one meal, and you can make that meal tastes like anything you want with synthetic flavours, and whatever shape/texture you want with printing. Eating burgers all day while still stay healthy!

[lajoswinkler]

Food texture is necessary not just because of the morale, but also peristalsis. The colon does not like being shoved with goo all day.

[fredinno]

I'm guessing it is completely possible to produce bland, flavourless nutrient gloop with all your body needs to survive, then add flavourings to it using small quantities of synthesised chemicals. Texture can be added using some sort of food printer.

Will it be as good as the real thing? Probably not, but it will be a heck of a lot more interesting and tasty than just gruel, while still providing a healthy level of nutrients.

Would it keep morale up though?

It's especially important in space, since being in such a small area makes it more likely for the crew members to get on each othere's nerves and start fighting, even if they are specially selected.

[RuBisCO]

Yes the food printing sounds like the way to go, like I was saying we could theoretically engineer hydrogenotrophes to make any raw biomaterial, starch, protein, fats, vitamins, they would need to be processed into something that resembled "food" Right now we are simply at growing minimally modified hydrogenotrophes so it would be years if not decades more of consented research to make a functional raw food stock synthesizer from nothing but CO2, nitrogen and water, let alone converting that raw stock into food which is palatable, not simply edible. Heck I could eat some powdered Bacterial Protein Extract right now, but it smells and looks like dried vomit.

[PB666]

Yes the food printing sounds like the way to go, like I was saying we could theoretically engineer hydrogenotrophes to make any raw biomaterial, starch, protein, fats, vitamins, they would need to be processed into something that resembled "food" Right now we are simply at growing minimally modified hydrogenotrophes so it would be years if not decades more of consented research to make a functional raw food stock synthesizer from nothing but CO2, nitrogen and water, let alone converting that raw stock into food which is palatable, not simply edible. Heck I could eat some powdered Bacterial Protein Extract right now, but it smells and looks like dried vomit.

I guess now is not the time to mention that the chemicals in 3-d printers are toxic to vertebrate cells. :^)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151104151532.htm

Edited November 5, 2015 by PB666

[peadar1987]

Would it keep morale up though?

It's especially important in space, since being in such a small area makes it more likely for the crew members to get on each othere's nerves and start fighting, even if they are specially selected.

Ever have Quorn? Or other meat substitutes? Before it's processed, it's essentially mycoprotien gloop, but once textured and flavoured, it's actually pretty nice. I'm not going to pretend it's as tasty as real meat (well, when the real meat is cooked right), but it's perfectly palatable, and in things like curries, where a lot of the meat's purpose is just to soak up flavour, you would barely notice the difference (A lot of the time anyway. They've got fake chicken and sausages pretty much down by this stage. Beef and bacon are getting there. I once tried their fake lamb. It was weird!)

It would certainly keep morale up more than squeezing beef paste out of a tube, or eating flavourless gruel.

[Teamwork]

...

The best space food production in my opinion would be one from an engineered hydrogenotrophic or syntrophy multiculture. Have a bioreactor that takes in CO2 (scrubbed from crew air) and Hydrogen (produced from electrolysis) and waste water, and out comes starch, fatty oils, and protein. The whole process could end up being more efficient than photosynthesis, be light independent and take up a lot less space and mass.

...

His/her name is RuBisCo, and he or she is suggesting an artificial method of carbon fixation. I get it!

[PB666]

Ever have Quorn? Or other meat substitutes? Before it's processed, it's essentially mycoprotien gloop, but once textured and flavoured, it's actually pretty nice. I'm not going to pretend it's as tasty as real meat (well, when the real meat is cooked right), but it's perfectly palatable, and in things like curries, where a lot of the meat's purpose is just to soak up flavour, you would barely notice the difference (A lot of the time anyway. They've got fake chicken and sausages pretty much down by this stage. Beef and bacon are getting there. I once tried their fake lamb. It was weird!)

It would certainly keep morale up more than squeezing beef paste out of a tube, or eating flavourless gruel.

BTW, Gluten was extracted by Buddhist and made into a high protein replacement for meat. Of course it is alcohol soluble and industry found that adding microbial deimidase to it made it so much useful for the food industry. Of course if you carry the DQ2 gene or are a homozygote thereof (up to 20% and 4% of certain European populations) not so good, in fact the more we did with gluten the worse its toxicity became. The problem is that we did not evolve to deal with gluten, even in wheat (hexaploid is by far the most triggering) let alone extracted, concentrated and chemically modifications thereof. Lesson - it takes sometimes couple thousand years to figure out bad stuff is bad.

Some other examples, the microbial amylase used to speed up bread backing, leading cause of anaphylaxis in bakers.

[RuBisCO]

His/her name is RuBisCo, and he or she is suggesting an artificial method of carbon fixation. I get it!

Reductive Acetyl-CoA is not artificial!

Photosynthesis is horribly inefficient, doubly so if we are using electric lighting. Cut out the need for light and go directly chemosynthesis.

Photosynthesis at best 6% photon energy makes it into biomass, usually much worse: open fields only counting edible product is ~0.5% efficiency.

Best electric light source only does 25% efficiency. Total is 1.5% at best. And that is not counting the inefficiency of making the electricity!

We could make hydrogen via solarthermal with up to 50% efficiency, RACA can achieve 60% efficiency, that is 30%, that is 5 times more then direct sunlight to plants and 20 times electric sunlight to plants. Even including things I missed in my back of the napkin calculations chemosythesis is going to win out in efficiency by at least twice.

my prefer pronoun is "god"... naw you could call me what ever you want I don't care

I guess now is not the time to mention that the chemicals in 3-d printers are toxic to vertebrate cells. :^)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151104151532.htm

Not all 3D printers are built out of the same stuff or use the same feed stock. A 3D printer that uses food goo is no more toxic than a pastry bag.

Edited November 7, 2015 by RuBisCO