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'Haute Cuisine' on Mars
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you're lucky enough to be a crew member of one of the next European Space Agency (ESA) long-term missions, you will have the choice between eleven new delicious recipes, such as 'martian bread and green tomato jam' or 'potato and tomato mille-feuilles' when it's time for dinner. In 'Ready for dinner on Mars?,' ESA says that these recipes will use fresh ingredients grown in greenhouses built on Mars colonies or other planets. The future astronauts -- should I write 'farmonauts'? -- will grow potatoes, onions, rice, soya or lettuce. And it's interesting to note that the new menus were elaborated with the help of Alain Ducasse, the French chef who has almost as many stars in the 'Guide Michelin' as there are planets in our Solar system. This overview contains more details and references about eating in space."
Don't read the overview. Just more ad revenues for him. (Info on Roland Piquepaille)
Chlorella!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I hope that these fancy new meals do not end up displacing "comfort foods" such as may have previously been on the menu.
As Martha would say, "It's a good thing."
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Unfortunetly, all plants grown on Mars will still be freeze-dried before eaten.
:-)
*chuckle* No, they really are thinking about growing the food.
The article was interesting (despite the fact that the ESA seems to be already picking out foods for a mission they don't yet have), but I would have liked to know more about how they planned to grow food on Mars. For example, the soil samples seem to tell us all kinds of different things about the actual composition of Martian soil. Have we found a concensus on what materials we'll need to bring to grow plants. Last I heard, nitrogen was going to be the biggest issue.
The other thing I'd like to see is someone actually developing a Martian greenhouse design. However you make it, you'll want the greenhouse to be light, portable, and easy to setup. My current thoughts are that a transparent, inflatable tarp would do the trick. We'd first need to know what the minimum pressure is that the plants require before we design the tarp. Hopefully, they can survive in pressures similar to Mars's surface. That knowledge could then be used to develop a greenhouse that works like this:
1. The tarp would be planted into the ground. Depending on the pressure required, it could either be nailed in with stakes (how primitive, but effective) or a stiff ring could be buried into the ground, thus creating an airtight seal.
2. CO2 could then be pumped from the surrounding atomosphere into the greenhouse. Depending on the plant, a certain amount of oxygen may need to be initially pumped in.
3. The pump system should move air in and out of the tarp area. Oxygen would be separated out, and replacement CO2 would be pumped from outside.
So far, so good. But then what about solar energy? Does enough energy reach Mars' surface to support these plants? Does artifical lighting need to be added? (I guess that's why they went with potatos. Little to no light necessary.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Mars's pressure is little higher than a vacuum. NASA has been doing experiments to get plants to grow in the sparsest atmosphere possible. Currently, if the pressure gets too low, plants think that there's a drought even if they're given plenty of water and kept at 100% humidity.
As for light, Mars gets half the sunlight we do on Earth; plenty of plants on Earth grow in partial shade.
Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?