There's dirt in that there dirt - living off the land on Mars.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, GregA said:

I don't mean to be a jerk about these hippy ideas but...  Yeah a bunch of hippies tried all this new age stuff with Biosphere 2 and it failed...  badly.

*sigh*   Nobody here is proposing trying "hippy" or "new age" stuff - they're proposing stuff based on actual science.

[GregA]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Are you saying that all vegetarians are liars? That would be a gross generalization that might (or might not) be based on your own anecdotal evidence but simply cannot be applied to the billions of actual vegetarians (of which I'm not, btw)

No, im saying there is some sort of biological mental dissonance going on.  That is they exist in a state of dissonance and are utterly unaware of their meat eating.  For example the livestock in Biosphere 2.  Eight vegetarians (politically motivated to promote vegetarianism) killed and ate the livestock, and not a single one of them has any recollection of that happening.  The result was so alarming that the members of the first Biosphere 2 expedition sabotaged the second expedition over the matter.

That is not just an anecdote.  That is 8 people in a rigorously controlled laboratory, all suffering a significant memory lapse, about slaughtering and eating meat.

Anthropologists have noted similar occurrences in island people, with regards to cannibalism.  That is they will engage in cannibalism but no one posses memory of the cannibalistic event.

During the Liberian civil war, witnesses report similar events with regards to cannibalism among child warriors, and none of those children (now adults) have any recollection of ever engaging in cannibalism.

Self reporting is notoriously non-scientific.  But no they are not liars, being a liar requires a knowledgeable attempt to deceive, there is something else going on with regards to vegetarians and eating meat.

But enough of the extremes...  Vegetarianism is absolutely correlated with strange mental health issues...  Certainly the type of issues that are associated with people becoming delusional or even psychotic...

 

http://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-9-67

[Matuchkin]

On 02/10/2016 at 1:54 AM, kerbiloid said:

 

Chickens eat whatever even the pigs feel disgusting. Brainless reptiles, by all means.
So, why pigs?

Also, as the chickens will live in a dome, in warm artificial conditions, they don't need feathers.
(Which take a lot of energy and food to grow, as any protein structure, but are absolutely useless, unless to make cushions.).

They will live in a very stretched room, so they don't need wings and legs. Even more, these parasite structures only decrease the biocycle efficiency.

Their only food will be an organic pulp made of algae and biological wastes. So, they don't need nibs or teeth.

As the pulp can be pre-digested before feeding the chickens, they don't need digesting system, only the absorbing one. No need in stomach and liver.

Of coursem they absolutely don't need any sensors. Eyes, brains, ears, other inedible trash.

So, a Martian chicken would should must ought to be a genetically modified piece of flesh intubed from front and rear ends with pulp lines.

Next step: monocellular culture of chicken algae. Then even no pulp lines, just a vat with pump.

P.S.
Not joking.

P.S.S.
About perchlorates.
Physics beats chemistry. Set a powerplant and set the sand on fire.
 

 

[DerekL1963]

27 minutes ago, GregA said:

That is not just an anecdote.

Until you present actual evidence, yes, yes it is just an anecdote.

[cubinator]

20 minutes ago, GregA said:

No, im saying there is some sort of biological mental dissonance going on.  That is they exist in a state of dissonance and are utterly unaware of their meat eating.  For example the livestock in Biosphere 2.  Eight vegetarians (politically motivated to promote vegetarianism) killed and ate the livestock, and not a single one of them has any recollection of that happening.  The result was so alarming that the members of the first Biosphere 2 expedition sabotaged the second expedition over the matter.

That is not just an anecdote.  That is 8 people in a rigorously controlled laboratory, all suffering a significant memory lapse, about slaughtering and eating meat.

Anthropologists have noted similar occurrences in island people, with regards to cannibalism.  That is they will engage in cannibalism but no one posses memory of the cannibalistic event.

During the Liberian civil war, witnesses report similar events with regards to cannibalism among child warriors, and none of those children (now adults) have any recollection of ever engaging in cannibalism.

Self reporting is notoriously non-scientific.  But no they are not liars, being a liar requires a knowledgeable attempt to deceive, there is something else going on with regards to vegetarians and eating meat.

But enough of the extremes...  Vegetarianism is absolutely correlated with strange mental health issues...  Certainly the type of issues that are associated with people becoming delusional or even psychotic...

 

http://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-9-67

That may be a topic for a new thread...I don't think these points are related to this one anymore.

---

Growing insects in space instead of mammals conserves mass:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34172/title/Why-Insects-Should-Be-in-Your-Diet/

Quote

For example, cows consume 8 g of feed to gain 1 g in weight, whereas insects can require less than 2 g of feed for the same weight gain (Science, 327:811, 2010).

This is quite beneficial on spacecraft, where (as we all know too well) mass is not something to be taken lightly (no pun intended).

[GregA]

4 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Until you present actual evidence, yes, yes it is just an anecdote.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11538814

 

[DerekL1963]

2 minutes ago, GregA said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11538814

You do realize that completely an utterly fails to support your claims?  No?  Off to the kill file with you then, you're a loon.

[Thor Wotansen]

The biggest obstacle to growing insects for food is psychological.  Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.  I'm not against it, but I think it fits better if it is included with an aquaponics system.  With the abundance of water that will be available by necessity, it makes sense for the nutrient cycle to involve a lot of green growing plants like reeds and grasses for processing the human waste, as well as acting as carbon scrubbers.  They will also serve to regulate the humidity in the hab.  We also need to think about pollinators, like bees.  Honey has several pretty awesome medicinal properties, as well as being a sweetener, and if we ever want fruit trees we will need pollinators.  Insects can provide the link between the aquaponics system and the human waste.  Tilapia are omnivorous fish, and feeding them insects and vegetable scraps will improve the meat, as well as the plants they're fertilizing.  Basically, for a sustainable colony you need to mimic the nutrient cycle on a small scale and in a controlled manner.

[cubinator]

40 minutes ago, Thor Wotansen said:

Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.

Not many Americans. Circa 80% of the world's nations eat insects regularly (and not just in their sleep!). Bees will surely be useful in the long run, but growing grasshoppers as a primary source of protein would be substantially more mass-efficient and easier on the ecosystem, leading to a much more viable option than the aforementioned chickens, cows, and pigs (at least at the start). Mr. Musk (not to make this another SpaceX thread) has stated that his first Martian colonists are likely to die off of Earth, would it really be that much worse if they were crunching on grasshoppers instead of chickens? Fish, as you've said, are a pretty good option too, my only concern is that water is heavy. You don't need nearly as much water to grow grasshoppers than you do to grow tilapia, again saving substantially on mass and effort.

Edited October 5, 2016 by cubinator

[insert_name]

8 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Not many Americans. Circa 80% of the world's nations eat insects regularly (and not just in their sleep!). Bees will surely be useful in the long run, but growing grasshoppers as a primary source of protein would be substantially more mass-efficient and easier on the ecosystem, leading to a much more viable option than the aforementioned chickens, cows, and pigs (at least at the start). Mr. Musk (not to make this another SpaceX thread) has stated that his first Martian colonists are likely to die off of Earth, would it really be that much worse if they were crunching on grasshoppers instead of chickens? Fish, as you've said, are a pretty good option too, my only concern is that water is heavy. You don't need nearly as much water to grow grasshoppers than you do to grow tilapia, again saving substantially on mass and effort.

The fish could be grown from eggs transported to Mars, the water could be harvested in situ, so mass wouldn't be much of an issue

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:

The biggest obstacle to growing insects for food is psychological.  Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.

Absolutely no problem. "Natural protein food paste with a taste of chicken."
Do you eat hot dogs? You would even don't know how this animal was called being alive.

38 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Bees will surely be useful in the long run

Bees without wings are useless. I imagine a close-loop space station with bee swarms occupying its corridors...

28 minutes ago, insert_name said:

but growing grasshoppers as a primary source of protein would be substantially more mass-efficient and easier on the ecosystem

1 t of locust eats 1 t of food per day. And converts its mostly into waste, not into protein.
Good luck with its feeding...

Animals smaller than a pig are just a s..t generators, not a food one.

[GregA]

1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:

The biggest obstacle to growing insects for food is psychological.  Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.  I'm not against it, but I think it fits better if it is included with an aquaponics system.  With the abundance of water that will be available by necessity, it makes sense for the nutrient cycle to involve a lot of green growing plants like reeds and grasses for processing the human waste, as well as acting as carbon scrubbers.  They will also serve to regulate the humidity in the hab.  We also need to think about pollinators, like bees.  Honey has several pretty awesome medicinal properties, as well as being a sweetener, and if we ever want fruit trees we will need pollinators.  Insects can provide the link between the aquaponics system and the human waste.  Tilapia are omnivorous fish, and feeding them insects and vegetable scraps will improve the meat, as well as the plants they're fertilizing.  Basically, for a sustainable colony you need to mimic the nutrient cycle on a small scale and in a controlled manner.

The only reason I suggested Tilipia earlier in thread is the Hawaiian bed and breakfast in video used Tilipia.  AFAIK the only fish that has successfully had frozen fish eggs be viable is Trout.  But I am not an ichthyologist.

1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:

The biggest obstacle to growing insects for food is psychological.  Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.  I'm not against it, but I think it fits better if it is included with an aquaponics system.  With the abundance of water that will be available by necessity, it makes sense for the nutrient cycle to involve a lot of green growing plants like reeds and grasses for processing the human waste, as well as acting as carbon scrubbers.  They will also serve to regulate the humidity in the hab.  We also need to think about pollinators, like bees.  Honey has several pretty awesome medicinal properties, as well as being a sweetener, and if we ever want fruit trees we will need pollinators.  Insects can provide the link between the aquaponics system and the human waste.  Tilapia are omnivorous fish, and feeding them insects and vegetable scraps will improve the meat, as well as the plants they're fertilizing.  Basically, for a sustainable colony you need to mimic the nutrient cycle on a small scale and in a controlled manner.

Not to harp on a dead issue, but use of insects utterly failed in Biosphere 2.  The good news is that greenhouses already exist and they have successful pollination solutions that don't require insects.

Mars colonists can skip all the organic farming techniques and use rigorous agriculture and dump the human feces in a hole on the surface of Mars, as there is plenty of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Calcium (aka fertilizer) coming from the chemical manufactory.

Organic farming techniques have a significantly lower yield than industrial farming techniques.  Not that it wouldn't happen eventually, but for the first bunch of years, the goal for farming is going to be max calories for watts consumed.  That is not organic...

[kerbiloid]

Human (also pig's, dog's, etc) waste is not a chemical weapon.
You can't use them as a fertilizer directly (as, say, cow's or goat's), you just have to collect it in a pit or barrel mixing with straw and let to rot. Then they call it compost.

[GregA]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Human (also pig's, dog's, etc) waste is not a chemical weapon.
You can't use them as a fertilizer directly (as, say, cow's or goat's), you just have to collect it in a pit or barrel mixing with straw and let to rot. Then they call it compost.

On Mars that means colonists have to spend watts, time, living space and CO2 scrubber time re-manufacturing something that is already available in abundance.  Namely (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Calcium from the salty soil) fertilizer.

Maybe it is time to spit ball the math on which would cost less in terms of resource costs to process vs resource cost to buy new (from the enriched brine water from the rocket fuel factory)

 

[Thor Wotansen]

Just to be clear, I don't see bees swarming corridors unless there's a problem with doors closing.  Most, if not all of the agriculture will happen in one or two areas.  Aquaponics yields 10X the produce of normal methods, which means that it takes proportionally less space, and while fish may require more feeding than insects, they also serve the purpose of fertilizing the vegetables.  The main reason I see for grasshoppers or locusts would be to maintain the nutrient cycle from the wastewater treatment system.  You can grow almost any common vegetable in a aquaponics system, and having pollinators makes things easier.  The honey is just a bonus.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Thor Wotansen said:

The biggest obstacle to growing insects for food is psychological.  Not many people are willing to eat grasshoppers or mealworms.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to assume the type of person that would volunteer/pay to become a pioneer-colonist won't fit comfortably in the category of "many" (or "most") people.

[kerbiloid]

Any insect or mealworm contains chitin parts and anyway should be milled and filtered to get an organic paste.
Why anybody needs this intermediate agent, reducing the food system productivity 10 times (1 level of a food pyramid), rather than just make the same paste from the unicellular plants, which anyway would be required to feed the gnats.

About honey. Mostly, the bees are designed for 1 g gravity to fly. They need flowers (which mean a highly inefficient spending of farming resources and pressurized space), much space to fly, they dislike chemicals, noise and (easier to list what they don't dislike).

Also any greenhouse, farm, plantation or fishtank mean that you need a huge building, powerful pumps and great amounts of heated water.
Again, imagine a slaughter section and how many space and water it needs.

On the Earth the edible biotrash macroplankton like locust, mealworms, small fishes, chicken and so on, utilize either chargeless scattered organics (grass, worms, insects, etc), or food waste (including low-quality crops), or your neighbors' harvest.
It's mostly excluded from your consumption balance, it's a pure profit with negligible expenses.
But in a pressurized spacebase you must provide all that scattered organics yourself.

Edited October 5, 2016 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, cubinator said:

Growing insects in space instead of mammals conserves mass:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34172/title/Why-Insects-Should-Be-in-Your-Diet/

They could be more specific: the insect which requires 2 g of food to grow 1 g of body, and the insect which gives more meat than a pig — are they the same insect?
Frogs and reptiles are also poikilothermic, why insects then?

Edited October 5, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Thor Wotansen]

Water won't be a problem, because the ISRU fuel depot will necessitate the mining and refining of huge amounts of it.  We will bring flowers anyways, mostly for making the place feel more like home, but including some medicinal herbs and spices wouldn't hurt.  The other reason I have for expounding on aquaponics and fish in particular is for a variety of diet.  Mars will be a strange place full of some pretty cray challenges for the early colonists, and having a nice meal instead of some freeze dried whatever is going to be pretty important for morale.  I'm not discounting insect paste as a useful food, and I'm sure it would be an effective use of resources, but having one meal of actual meat every week or so will be a lot nicer.  Besides, the fish don't eat as much as one would think, and they are literally what make the plants grow.

As for the insects that are adapted to 1G, I'm sure they will get used to the 0.3G pretty quick.  It might be interesting to watch them figure it out though.

[todofwar]

Wow this thread took a weird detour. Anyway, I'll still argue for a vegetarian diet (tons of people are vegetarian, no cognitive dissonance required). It is the easiest to maintain, and so long as the correct crops are grown ( not just soy for protein) you can get a full compliment of nutrients. For those vitamins hard to get from plant sources just get gmo yeast and bacteria. Maybe bring some chickens and sheep to get milk and eggs, and some nice wool.

Also, the Haber Bosch process to get fertilizer from nitrogen is not trivial to get going, so you'll absolutely want to be recycling nutrients. No one here is arguing organic farming techniques because they like them, this is arguing the most efficient small scale farming techniques that happen to sound organic. All that electrochemistry that got cited will be far more energy intensive than just maintaining a compost heap. 

This colony won't be the hilton, it's going to be close to a 1st century lifestyle. Lots of manual labor (robotics will be reserved for eva), not allot of luxuries like television or video games, medicine will not be up to the standards of a developed nation, not much privacy, all sophisticated tech devoted to life support not creature comforts. This isn't an argument against doing it, but it will be a tough existence and I don't think the colonists will mind the grasshoppers after a short while.

[DerekL1963]

5 hours ago, Thor Wotansen said:

Mars will be a strange place full of some pretty cray challenges for the early colonists, and having a nice meal instead of some freeze dried whatever is going to be pretty important for morale.

Having been about as close to having BTDT as you can get without going into space (making patrols on an SSBN), you cannot even begin to imagine how much difference a good meal (especially if it contains fresh stuff) is for morale.  (And we lived out of the freezer and cans, far better and more familiar than the freeze dried stuff, so this effect will likely be amplified on Mars.)  Spending a few tens of tons early on towards this will unquestionably provide long term benefits.

[KSK]

On 4 October 2016 at 9:48 PM, GregA said:

But enough of the extremes...  Vegetarianism is absolutely correlated with strange mental health issues...  Certainly the type of issues that are associated with people becoming delusional or even psychotic...

http://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-9-67

Not sure if this is just sub-standard trolling or what, but you really should read your own links. As the saying goes - correlation does not prove causation. Which proved to be the case here.

Results
Vegetarians displayed elevated prevalence rates for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and somatoform disorders. Due to the matching procedure, the findings cannot be explained by socio-demographic characteristics of vegetarians (e.g. higher rates of females, predominant residency in urban areas, high proportion of singles). The analysis of the respective ages at adoption of a vegetarian diet and onset of a mental disorder showed that the adoption of the vegetarian diet tends to follow the onset of mental disorders.

Conclusions
In Western cultures vegetarian diet is associated with an elevated risk of mental disorders. However, there was no evidence for a causal role of vegetarian diet in the etiology of mental disorders.

 

And exaggerating anxiety and/or depressive disorders into strange mental health disorders associated with delusional or psychotic behaviour is frankly offensive - but we're getting off topic again.

[GregA]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Not sure if this is just sub-standard trolling or what, but you really should read your own links. As the saying goes - correlation does not prove causation. Which proved to be the case here.

Results
Vegetarians displayed elevated prevalence rates for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and somatoform disorders. Due to the matching procedure, the findings cannot be explained by socio-demographic characteristics of vegetarians (e.g. higher rates of females, predominant residency in urban areas, high proportion of singles). The analysis of the respective ages at adoption of a vegetarian diet and onset of a mental disorder showed that the adoption of the vegetarian diet tends to follow the onset of mental disorders.

Conclusions
In Western cultures vegetarian diet is associated with an elevated risk of mental disorders. However, there was no evidence for a causal role of vegetarian diet in the etiology of mental disorders.

 

And exaggerating anxiety and/or depressive disorders into strange mental health disorders associated with delusional or psychotic behaviour is frankly offensive - but we're getting off topic again.

Only correlation is needed for my argument to be valid...  By the way, it is not just emotional issues that plague vegetarians.  They also consume more medicines, they get more non-colorectal cancers.  They have a significant increase in cataracts.  They are more susceptible to Osteoporosis.  Vegetarians have significantly more health issues in other areas as well, I am just listing the ones that will be particularly troubling on mars.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0088278.PDF

Finally no, there is at least one incident of a vegetarian becoming psychotic, because of their diet.  That is not offensive, that is just stating facts, and it is totally on topic if you want to start a vegetarian colony on Mars...  Because it matters, a psychotic person is a risk to the whole colony.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19892219

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by GregA

[GregA]

12 hours ago, todofwar said:

Wow this thread took a weird detour. Anyway, I'll still argue for a vegetarian diet (tons of people are vegetarian, no cognitive dissonance required). It is the easiest to maintain, and so long as the correct crops are grown ( not just soy for protein) you can get a full compliment of nutrients. For those vitamins hard to get from plant sources just get gmo yeast and bacteria. Maybe bring some chickens and sheep to get milk and eggs, and some nice wool.

Also, the Haber Bosch process to get fertilizer from nitrogen is not trivial to get going, so you'll absolutely want to be recycling nutrients. No one here is arguing organic farming techniques because they like them, this is arguing the most efficient small scale farming techniques that happen to sound organic. All that electrochemistry that got cited will be far more energy intensive than just maintaining a compost heap. 

This colony won't be the hilton, it's going to be close to a 1st century lifestyle. Lots of manual labor (robotics will be reserved for eva), not allot of luxuries like television or video games, medicine will not be up to the standards of a developed nation, not much privacy, all sophisticated tech devoted to life support not creature comforts. This isn't an argument against doing it, but it will be a tough existence and I don't think the colonists will mind the grasshoppers after a short while.

Mars atmosphere has very little nitrogen, so the Haber Bosch process is useless on Mars...

On the other hand the soil is loaded with nitrates(about 1%).  All that is needed to utilize the nitrates is find a patch of sand and dirt that has the salts required(get your test kit at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Luster-Leaf-1601-Rapitest-Soil/dp/B0000DI845?th=1), mine it up into your space dump truck, and process it as a batch at the rocket fuel factory, and you have nitrate laden brine water, and the factory has its pure water for making rocket fuel, the tailings are dumped on your latest finished hab as radiation shielding...

The only reason colonists will not use the mars dirt for growth media is the same reason it is easy to harvest chemicals...  There are simply too many, and they are in the wrong proportions.

[kerbiloid]

Though I'm not a vegetarianism sympathizer at all, the mental disorder correlation doesn't prove anything.
Say, persons with mental discomfort can try different ways to cure their problems, and as vegetarianism is enough popualr and more or less harmless, stay with it, increasing their presence in a sampling.

Algae with chicken genom would satisfy both kinds of mankind.

Edited October 6, 2016 by kerbiloid