Space food of the future

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Space travel is for vegetarians?

From CNN, is the below.

Space food of the future

Trip to Mars will require astronauts to grow their own food

Wednesday, November 23, 2005 Posted: 2044 GMT (0444 HKT)

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP)

-- A few decades from now, space travelers living on Mars may think the

Pilgrims

had it easy.

The pioneers who make the 80-million-mile, three-year journey to Mars and back

will

probably not have the just-add-water-and-heat packaged foods that are aboard the

international space station, where the crew orbiting Earth will prepare a

Thanksgiving dinner Thursday of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans and

cherry-blueberry cobbler.

During the six- to eight-month trip to Mars, space travelers will grow lettuce,

spinach, carrots, tomatoes, green onions, radishes, bell peppers, strawberries,

herbs and cabbage aboard their spacecraft.

And when they arrive at the Red Planet for a stay of about a year and a half,

they

will cultivate potatoes, soybeans, wheat, rice, peanuts and beans in soil-less

hydroponic chambers, according to NASA's food scientists.

" We will have to grow the vegetables up there because there is no way you can

bring

fresh, aroma-filled, crunchy vegetables and have it last, " said Michele

Perchonok, a

food technologist at NASA's Space Center, which is working on a project

to

send humans back to the moon, and from there to Mars.

The wheat will most likely be processed and made into bread or pasta. Syrup

could be

extracted from sweet potatoes and used to sweeten cookies. And the rice could be

cooked or used in drinks.

" I sort of explain it as an 1800s kitchen with some automation, " Perchonok said.

" You are going to have to make your peanut butter. If you want a salad dressing,

you

are going to have to make your salad dressing. "

The packaged meals astronauts eat in space now do not have a long enough shelf

life

to be safe for consumption during the entire length of a Mars mission. They also

add

weight and create waste -- something NASA is going to great lengths to prevent.

In fact, NASA wants to recycle just about everything -- even turning the

astronauts'

sweat and urine back into drinking water.

Some studies are looking into the use of fish -- specifically tilapia -- as a

way to

recycle shower water, toilet waste and the water clothes are washed in. Tilapia

eat

human waste and are safe for human consumption afterward, said Vickie Kloeris,

who

manages the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Space Center.

Some crew members are leery of turning urine into drinking water. But Kloeris

noted

that water-treatment systems on Earth do that already.

" So in real life you are drinking somebody else's urine instead of your own, "

she

said. " So I'm not sure psychologically which is worse. I think I'd rather drink

my own. "

Al Pater, PhD; email: old542000@...

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