I am a layperson for astrochemistry but IIRC comets have much higher hydrocarbon content by an order of magnitude or more (and obviously more water, fewer metals to contend with for extraction energy requirements).
Anyone have more insights? Did I miss mention of comets in my skim of the paper?
Ps usually HN not a punfest, but kudos for the Starmite(tm) @andai
As a young child I was filled with hope, and some other mixed feelings, as it was anouced that the lunar astronoghts would be testing to see if the moon was made of blue cheese.My hope was that this would be brought back to feed all of the hungry people, but as I didnt want any myself, I had mixed feeling of not sharing
there lot.And was quite disapointed to hear the anouncement from the moon, that it was not in fact made of blue cheese.
No one is going to be disapointed if the
astroslime cakes dont work out.
I wonder if it would be possible for e.g. asteroid material to work as an indirect source of nutrition? I.e. carry a specialized yeast on board that can "eat" the asteroid, and, sort of like sourdough, use the yeast's excess growth as food for humans... Sounds nasty now that I say it out loud haha.
This is very close to the subject of the article. In the following quotation, "consortia" means (I think) globs of algae:
> After comparing the experimental pyrolysis breakdown products, which were able to be converted to biomass using a consortia, it was hypothesized that equivalent chemicals found on asteroids could also be converted to biomass with the same nutritional content as the pyrolyzed products. This study is a mathematical exercise that explores the potential food yield that could be produced from these methodologies.
That's the actual plan. It's not explsined in the introduction, but in the middle of the article they explain that they will food bacterias with the proceced material, and later people will eat the bacteria.
Problem is that the vast majority of material is metal, so your digester needs a way to saturate the metal to reach the CHON, and and then extract the digester. Is that really better than extracting the CHON directly and then processing it?
This reminds me of US research that was done during the Cold War about surviving a nuclear winter by producing food products directly from petroleum. It's theoretically possible and you could survive on it as a supplemental source of calories.
I think optimizing farming for space flight is probably better, especially if you have always-on solar power (as you do anywhere near the sun) or nuclear power. Hydrocarbons from asteroids and comets are probably better suited for things like plastics manufacture and petrochemicals, since you would not have biotic oil sources in space.
Edit: The more I read on this the more doubtful I’m becoming that this was actually produced at scale. If anyone has a better source I’d love to see it!
I’m really curious about this. I did find one 2022 article about producing edible fats from petroleum [1].
It does cite two articles from the ‘60s one about building acids from petroleum, and building long chains of fat from biological sources. I’ve found that people may have been thinking about it at the height of the Cold War. Do you have any links you could point me to?
I can't think of a single reason we wouldn't just eat algae sludge or synthetic protein mash or something else. Farming is not a space- or weight- optimized process.
To be fair, people will still be people… if the sludge/protein mash can be mildly upgraded to diversity/quality comparable to MREs (not that I’ve ever had one) sure, but for long term space flight it seems plausible that the psychological/morale detriments of eating sludge every day (or any single meal for that matter) would be significant.
Isn’t there a requirement for lots of fibre in the diet as well as vitamins, protein, carbohydrates and fats. As well as the psychological effect of eating good food and not mush.
there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.
And now things that we know and wish that we didn’t (ie spaceship recycling)
The relevant comparison is the energy needed to turn an asteroids into food vs. the energy needed to turn exhaled CO2 and poop back into food. Astronauts live in closed ecosystems, so you don't need to bring in additional mass. Just close the cycle.
For my Factorio friends out there, this sounds like grounds for a mod that let's you "mine" nutrients in space
This is roughly a thing in Space Age!
I am a layperson for astrochemistry but IIRC comets have much higher hydrocarbon content by an order of magnitude or more (and obviously more water, fewer metals to contend with for extraction energy requirements).
Anyone have more insights? Did I miss mention of comets in my skim of the paper?
Ps usually HN not a punfest, but kudos for the Starmite(tm) @andai
Reminds me of the CHON factories from the Heechee Saga, by Frederik Pohl.
My brother in _Gateway_ (1977).
As a young child I was filled with hope, and some other mixed feelings, as it was anouced that the lunar astronoghts would be testing to see if the moon was made of blue cheese.My hope was that this would be brought back to feed all of the hungry people, but as I didnt want any myself, I had mixed feeling of not sharing there lot.And was quite disapointed to hear the anouncement from the moon, that it was not in fact made of blue cheese. No one is going to be disapointed if the astroslime cakes dont work out.
I wonder if it would be possible for e.g. asteroid material to work as an indirect source of nutrition? I.e. carry a specialized yeast on board that can "eat" the asteroid, and, sort of like sourdough, use the yeast's excess growth as food for humans... Sounds nasty now that I say it out loud haha.
We're the scary aliens other ETI's make sci-fi horror movies about.
"...and they wield GREY GOO that turns *everything* it touches into nutrients they lap up in their flappy appendages..."
We always have been
This is very close to the subject of the article. In the following quotation, "consortia" means (I think) globs of algae:
> After comparing the experimental pyrolysis breakdown products, which were able to be converted to biomass using a consortia, it was hypothesized that equivalent chemicals found on asteroids could also be converted to biomass with the same nutritional content as the pyrolyzed products. This study is a mathematical exercise that explores the potential food yield that could be produced from these methodologies.
> a specialized yeast on board that can "eat" the asteroid
that's my 'retirement project'
https://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-ye...
That's the actual plan. It's not explsined in the introduction, but in the middle of the article they explain that they will food bacterias with the proceced material, and later people will eat the bacteria.
Starmite!
Minemite
Problem is that the vast majority of material is metal, so your digester needs a way to saturate the metal to reach the CHON, and and then extract the digester. Is that really better than extracting the CHON directly and then processing it?
that depends so much on the kind of asteroid i thought.
Lisa Simpson: "Look (the boar) is licking the slime off that rock! That's what he's been eating: slime!"
This reminds me of US research that was done during the Cold War about surviving a nuclear winter by producing food products directly from petroleum. It's theoretically possible and you could survive on it as a supplemental source of calories.
I think optimizing farming for space flight is probably better, especially if you have always-on solar power (as you do anywhere near the sun) or nuclear power. Hydrocarbons from asteroids and comets are probably better suited for things like plastics manufacture and petrochemicals, since you would not have biotic oil sources in space.
Apparently producing margarine from coal was actually done during WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine?wprov=sfti1#Coal_but...
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/brave-new-bu...
Edit: The more I read on this the more doubtful I’m becoming that this was actually produced at scale. If anyone has a better source I’d love to see it!
I can't decide if this sounds more like a startup idea or a proposal from the coal lobby.
I was never a fan of margarine, but the more I learn tidbits like this the more I think it strange.
I’m really curious about this. I did find one 2022 article about producing edible fats from petroleum [1].
It does cite two articles from the ‘60s one about building acids from petroleum, and building long chains of fat from biological sources. I’ve found that people may have been thinking about it at the height of the Cold War. Do you have any links you could point me to?
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02638...
I can't think of a single reason we wouldn't just eat algae sludge or synthetic protein mash or something else. Farming is not a space- or weight- optimized process.
To be fair, people will still be people… if the sludge/protein mash can be mildly upgraded to diversity/quality comparable to MREs (not that I’ve ever had one) sure, but for long term space flight it seems plausible that the psychological/morale detriments of eating sludge every day (or any single meal for that matter) would be significant.
Isn’t there a requirement for lots of fibre in the diet as well as vitamins, protein, carbohydrates and fats. As well as the psychological effect of eating good food and not mush.
Soluble fiber is broken down partially in the gut by bacteria/fermentation. Lots remains. Insoluble fiber passes through mostly unchanged.
You see where this is going.
You need only minimal new inputs and the rest can be recycled.
To extend D Rumsfeld
there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.
And now things that we know and wish that we didn’t (ie spaceship recycling)
If I'm in a fragile metal bubble in the deep black vastness of space, the texture of my nutrisludge will be the least existential of my worries.
If Rimworld (the game) is to be believed, people that eat too much nutrisludge will eventually snap and eat the people around them.
> If I'm in a fragile metal bubble in the deep black vastness of space...
... maintaining your mental health is probably a significant concern, which may indeed be surprisingly impacted by the texture of your nutrisludge.
The relevant comparison is the energy needed to turn an asteroids into food vs. the energy needed to turn exhaled CO2 and poop back into food. Astronauts live in closed ecosystems, so you don't need to bring in additional mass. Just close the cycle.
"The asteroid mass needed to support one astronaut for one year is between 160k metric tons and 5k metric tons. "
10 to 500 tons per person per day.
Well, if you never recycle anything and rely only on the extremely low quality reserves you found floating around...
I have no idea why the measurement unities even make sense.
Asteroids which enter a planet's atmosphere will probably yield even better food, because they will be a little meteor.
because they will be a little meteor, right?
How did you comet o that conclusion?
And a hungry mouth will approach: "please sir, armageddon some more?"
My 3 year old used to think the dinosaurs are gone because a meat eater killed them all.
The Dodo bird could probably be considered a dinosaur, not entirely wrong...
underrated comet
stellar even
Title should really be "How we might be able to ..."
We're just lucky the HN title ruiner bot didn't change it to "We can food"
I can't wait for us to start mining asteroids and my bank account has $123,456,789,101,123,500,700!!!!!!
And then use that to buy $80 trillion dollar cheeseburgers at McD's!