Alfonso Maruccia

Bon appétit: Deep space exploration will not be possible without access to food sources. Bringing astronauts new ration supplies from Earth will likely be impossible. However, researchers think they have solved this fundamental survival issue. Asteroids.

A team of scientists from Western University's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration have proposed mining asteroids to convert the raw, rocky materials into edible biomass for astronauts. Their study speculates that the hydrocarbons (organic compounds consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon) making up asteroids could hold an essential element for producing edible material to sustain astronauts in deep space or on Mars.

The novel approach is a mathematical hypothesis that explores the idea of potentially producing viable food yield from asteroids. The process required to turn hydrocarbons into edible "stuff" is known as pyrolysis, the thermal decomposition of raw materials at high temperatures without oxygen.

After being toasted by pyrolysis, asteroid samples are fed to specifically engineered microbes (bacteria) capable of producing organic biomass. Astronauts could then consume the byproduct, acquiring all the nutrients they need. The process could solve the logistical problems of feeding space explorers since solutions like resupply missions from Earth are costly and time-consuming.

The researchers claim that an asteroid like Bennu could provide enough biomass, and thus enough calories, to support between 600 and 17,000 "astronaut life years."

"The asteroid mass needed to support one astronaut for one year is between 160,000 metric tons and 5,000 metric tons," the study concludes. "Based on these results, this approach of using carbon in asteroids to provide a distributed food source for humans appears promising, but there are substantial areas of future work."

The pyrolysis approach of using carbon deposits in asteroids to provide astronauts with a distributed food source is promising, but there's still room for "substantial" research. Pyrolysis is currently employed in several Earthbound processes within the chemical industry, producing ethylene, many types of carbon, and other chemicals derived from petroleum, coal, and wood.

The idea of using asteroids for food stems from a transformation project funded by DARPA known as ReSource. The Pentagon research agency wants to know if troops can turn plastic MRE (meals ready to eat) containers into more food. One of ReSource's research teams suggests using pyrolysis to break down the waste products. What's a little more plastic added to plastics we already consume?

Permalink to story:

Researchers want to use pyrolysis to turn asteroids into food for long-term space exploration

NumberNine

Nice, let's get this out onto a tray.

emmzo

Amazing! Making food out of carbon, because... chemistry. Btw, one can also make gold out of any metal, you know! Behold! World hunger is going to end soon, we can just chop up some dirt.

kiwigraeme

Kind of weird in one way, as a space ship is kind of a closed system, and ignoring quantum effects , half lifes, the elements you take on will be the same 1000 years later, so in theory you only need energy in a closed system.
Given that back up is great.
Plus some recoveries may be very energy intensive.
Bacteria, fungi etc now can be made to order, plus there is probably billions still undiscovered here on earth

If travelling for a long time , hibernation, just using brains , that can be hooked up to spaceship and later cyborg bodies etc. Though suppose this is just for nearest stars.
AI robots still make the most sense, less energy , less shielding, though suffer also hallucinations have less mental issues, Plus transformers are pretty cool.
On a 20 year return trip only one can stand , one can fall, I'll put my money on Optimus Prime

unoficialoficial

I'd like to bring up a concept related to asteroids. Even if we could somehow produce infinite energy (like from antimatter), we still wouldn't be able to produce metals. So, how long humans can survive on Earth depends on whether they can get access to raw metal sources.
There's an asteroid in our solar system called "16 Psyche." It's made up of a lot of rare metals and is about 115 km in radius. It orbits at about 2.5 AU from the Sun, between Mars and Jupiter. It'll be closest to Earth in 2026 (after that, it'll move further away every year, making it harder to get heavy equipment there). It'll need a propulsion system that can produce 10²² Joule (a lot more than a million of the most powerful rockets) to change its orbit near Earth so that mining has better chances of succeeding in the future.
So, to some extent, our ability to survive on Earth as a species for a long time depends on our ability (in this generation) to build this propulsion system in the next few months and send it to this asteroid in 2025. NASA sent a mission there last year (in 2023), but it won't arrive until 2029. So, it's up to us. We have less than six months to figure out how to easily produce antimatter (it's the only way to access that much energy for the propulsion system in a manageable way).

p51d007

I thought they would just take along a bunch of ants, worms, etc? Isn't that the new thing now? Insect protein? <wink>

nitebird

Creating food without needing hydroponics to raise plants would be a boom for space travel, but I'm not sure about the mass efficiency of this approach. It's one thing if you can send a processor to land on Mars first to create food, but if the source is asteriods, unless you're able to haul tons of rock with you, you're stuck building a farm operation in deep space which will require a logistics network to deliver the food where you need it... defeating the goal of a convenient supply of food. In the near future, I'm pretty sure recycling biowaste into food biomass, via plants, bacteria, insects, whatever will be the solution. Maybe in the distant future, when we need to create biomass to sustain space colonies, mining/farm operations turning asteroids into arable soil will be a real thing.

FaTaL

That asteroid looks like a giant terd after eating too much cheese.

Posts: 1,356 +406

Bon appétit: Deep space exploration will not be possible without access to food sources. Bringing astronauts new ration supplies from Earth will likely be impossible. However, researchers think they have solved this fundamental survival issue. Asteroids.

NumberNine

Posts: 345 +661

emmzo

Posts: 1,040 +1,547

kiwigraeme

Posts: 2,292 +1,620

unoficialoficial

Posts: 40 +27

p51d007

Posts: 4,187 +4,182

nitebird

Posts: 131 +129

FaTaL

Posts: 380 +503

Similar threads