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Food
Jun 23, 2017 22:09:20 GMT
Post by guzlomi on Jun 23, 2017 22:09:20 GMT
One of the main problems to create a space colony is how to feed the people. Suministers will run out quickly, and maybe a regular service to send more will not be available or worth the cost. So space colonies should be autonomous to get their own food.
Beyond plants and vegetables (hydroponic, potatoes and so on) it would be interesting to find a source of proteins (meat). What kind of animals could be farmed in space? Obviously, not big ones.
So maybe it would interesting to explore the possibility to farm INSECTS and WORMS. They are "easy" to farm, reproduce quickly, not much space needed...
What do you think? Are space pioneers going to eat insects and worms in their diet? Many realiable sources said that these are the best future to feed Humanity...
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Food
Jun 24, 2017 7:42:14 GMT
Post by Mike on Jun 24, 2017 7:42:14 GMT
I don't think insects are cost-effective. How much of their mass is actually edible? Remember, that they have to consume something to grow, probably plants, and organic matter will be needed to make soil from regolith. I also see potential problem with such small organisms with whole Colony Engineering. What when they will infect oxygen producing system, or water reclamation? There is also problem with low gravity, and lack of wind, as that would probably disorient flying species, but we eventually can focus on non-flying one.
Technically, I don't see problem with cows, if they will be born from artifical wombs, transport should't be much problem. But since there is no suh technology yet, fishes seems to be best alternative. There need to be lots of water in Colony anyway, and planting algaes above ponds would be both food for fishes, and humans, and cheap oxygen production.
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Food
Jun 24, 2017 18:28:24 GMT
Post by petrv on Jun 24, 2017 18:28:24 GMT
IMO the algaes plus insect´s proteins will be the main source, complemented by some plants, which will use CO2 from atmosphere and produce oxygen at the same time.
And BTW don´t forget the famous potatoes - the researchers in Peru confirmed under some conditions it´s possible! cipotato.org/press-room/blog/indicators-show-potatoes-can-grow-mars/
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Food
Jun 26, 2017 12:26:44 GMT
Post by phicksur on Jun 26, 2017 12:26:44 GMT
Crickets were used in my calculation for food inputs. They consume vegetable waste and grow rapidly and are good sources of protein. The oxygen required to keep them alive is actually not very high.
Here is a quote from my research on Crickets as a food source:
But, suffice it to say, to feed a population of 1000, we'd need 60kg of protein per day. A single cricket offers 13 grams of protein, so we're talking about close to 5000 crickets per day. Assuming a breeding population, and a cricket life cycle of 2 months, that means we'd need a population of 350,000 crickets maintained at all times. That's another oxygen-requirement, for which data on the amount of oxygen consumption crickets require is almost completely absent from the Internet, except this high school science project. Extrapolating from the data this science project provided, we can determine that the cricket in the experiment, at the moderate temperature, consumed .04mL after 2 minutes, which should be 11.5mL of the course of an entire day. We are presuming a population of 350,000 crickets, consuming 11.5mL of air per day, each liter of air weighs 1.43g, That means our cricket farm of 350,000 crickets consumes.... about 6kg of air per day. That is the equivalent oxygen requirement of another 7 people, which isn't a lot but does mean we need to add another 50 trees or so to compensate, oxygen-wise. They would eat our waste vegetable matter, so they wouldn't even require special feed or care.
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Food
Jun 26, 2017 12:46:33 GMT
Post by Mike on Jun 26, 2017 12:46:33 GMT
Crickets were used in my calculation for food inputs. They consume vegetable waste and grow rapidly and are good sources of protein. The oxygen required to keep them alive is actually not very high. Here is a quote from my research on Crickets as a food source: But, suffice it to say, to feed a population of 1000, we'd need 60kg of protein per day. A single cricket offers 13 grams of protein, so we're talking about close to 5000 crickets per day. Assuming a breeding population, and a cricket life cycle of 2 months, that means we'd need a population of 350,000 crickets maintained at all times. That's another oxygen-requirement, for which data on the amount of oxygen consumption crickets require is almost completely absent from the Internet, except this high school science project. Extrapolating from the data this science project provided, we can determine that the cricket in the experiment, at the moderate temperature, consumed .04mL after 2 minutes, which should be 11.5mL of the course of an entire day. We are presuming a population of 350,000 crickets, consuming 11.5mL of air per day, each liter of air weighs 1.43g, That means our cricket farm of 350,000 crickets consumes.... about 6kg of air per day. That is the equivalent oxygen requirement of another 7 people, which isn't a lot but does mean we need to add another 50 trees or so to compensate, oxygen-wise. They would eat our waste vegetable matter, so they wouldn't even require special feed or care. Interesting. So what actual Cricket species will be best for existing in Colony? I am guessing non-flying one would be safest. How big area will be needed to sustain their population? Can they be safely allowed to travel around whole Colony, or is it better to keep them in enclosed area? And most importantly - how exactly are they consumed, and caught? If you have to eat one, after another, that is quite time, and energy consuming, but if you can grind them into paste, that would be quite efficient. Can you also eat/digest their external skeleton?
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Food
Jun 26, 2017 13:21:10 GMT
Post by phicksur on Jun 26, 2017 13:21:10 GMT
1) That would have to be researched (the students that did the oxygen research didn't specify species). 2) Crickets can be 'grown' pretty densely. It is done in bait shops across the United States as they are often used as fish bait. 3) It is best to keep them enclosed, but one should expect them to escape in small numbers. An interesting and possibly fun activity for children would be to hunt for these errant crickets. 4) They could be eaten individually if cooked, but it is more likely they would be ground up into a paste. 5) Their exoskeleton is also protein, just less digestible, so the whole cricket would just get ground up and pasteurized.
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Food
Jun 26, 2017 13:41:20 GMT
Post by Mike on Jun 26, 2017 13:41:20 GMT
Ah fish bait, so another argument for having pond with fishes in the Colony. Wouldn't another kind of bugs be better as food source? Some fat, slow grubs maybe?
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Food
Jun 26, 2017 21:54:46 GMT
Post by petrv on Jun 26, 2017 21:54:46 GMT
IMO would be better to grow them on surface, make the protein paste also there (could be a bit smelly process?) and sent just the paste to MOB. In case of massive cricket break it could be easy to open door and freeze them - but you couldn´t do it on MOB with people living there... Grubs could also be good alternative for protein production - we should ask bigred about their´s family´s sustainable food production...
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Food
Jun 27, 2017 2:47:13 GMT
Post by bigred on Jun 27, 2017 2:47:13 GMT
Jesus guys....grubs and insects....are you kidding??? :-) Perhaps let's look at how we can eat something at least a little bit apertising. Thanks for the intro Petrv. Food sustainability and growth is about creating foods with the nutrients in them that are supposed to be there while catering to the need for production at scale. This involves creating the correct environment for that to take place. The foods we eat generally these days does not have the level of nutrient in it that is natural for the genetic breeding that has been done over the last few thousand years. There are a number of reasons for this but the most prominent is the degradation of the environments we grow them in and the need for speedy growth and mass movement to market. So 2 factors come into play: (a) the nutrient is not in the soil/water environment - so loads of enhancers are added to the environment which only contributes to destruction of the correct environment (b) the produce is not actually physically ripe or mature when it is picked - while some fruit products can mature due to decay most vegetable products and all meat products deteriorate in nutrient level after harvesting. This leads to our human reliance on additives in our diet.
While in the hostile environment of space humans are probably going to need some reliance on additives, food can be grown in hostile environments with the correct environmental components and practices that allow the correct/necessary levels of nutrient to be present. Our family company has live microbial products which are utilised to break down bio-waste to create soil and water that has the correct level of environmental structures to allow this type of growing. We also have microbial products which help the gut health and general health of animals and birds to allow their bodies to grow properly and mature getting the correct levels of protein and nutrient needed if you utilise meats. (I will not get into an argument about eating animals or not here as it is not appropriate - I am simply pointing out the technology necessary to overcome the main problem with food nutrient levels). These microbes survive in highly human hostile environments and utilise high waveform radiation such as UV and IR as their energy source. They have been known to survive in Xray which is what one lab experiments is about in the coming few months (Raditation Survivability of VRM Active Microbial products).
The reason the nutrient level is necessary is that you can eat less if the nutrients are there. The problem is will you eat only those things or do you want to eat chips and bread (ie. we are addicted to carbohydrate rich foods and we are therefore pushed by our bodies to eat much greater levels of the current low nutrient foods which would be better for us). Before specifying which types of food to include we would need to determine what is the most appropriate diet and how to control that. Then we can decide the best foods to fit this and then we can decide how to grow them (therefore what environmental factors need to be taken into consideration).
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Food
Jun 27, 2017 3:01:04 GMT
Post by bigred on Jun 27, 2017 3:01:04 GMT
Your general assumptions of O2 being produced and CO2 being "eaten" by the greenery is only partially true. While a plant is photosynthesising it will also produce CO2. It is true that at certain times of the daily growth cycle plants exude O2 however it is not the entire day. In general it is safe to assume that you will produce some O2 and absorb some CO2 but it is not the main way to add O2 or control CO2. The real benefit comes from the purification of the air which occurs during a plants breathing cycle. This process produces air which is similar to air produced by those electronic air purifiers (some of which produce ozone which is not so good in a space habitat due to things such as increased static charges etc). This air is cleansed of a lot of the impurities which get caught up in our bodily purification processes and are sometimes retained within our bodies. The effect of this and of the greenery acts on our brains to produce endorphines which helps our general health, which in turn affects our emotions and therefor the social interactions we have. This is the main result from the early NASA studies on plants in space. However the space industry in general have a problem in that they have a fetish for sterilisation which of course rules out plants or bio-waste re-use.
I personally find it amusing how they can have such a fetish and still re-use piss for drinking :-)
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Food
Jun 27, 2017 12:46:01 GMT
Post by Mike on Jun 27, 2017 12:46:01 GMT
IMO would be better to grow them on surface, make the protein paste also there (could be a bit smelly process?) and sent just the paste to MOB. In case of massive cricket break it could be easy to open door and freeze them - but you couldn´t do it on MOB with people living there... Yeah, I was already thinking about safeguard from Crickets "overproduction" during experiment, and thought about wooden shed, which can be simply burned down, in case of well..."emergency" This Colony begin to look more, like slaughterhouse, than Scientific Facility Although this "presenting Crickets to outside atmosphere" seems like good way of harvesting them. Just several separate rooms for Crickets, we close one of the room, let Vacuum/Mars Atmosphere enter inside, then fill room with breathable air, after some time, and just enter, and gather dead bugs, ready to be turned into pasta.
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Food
Jun 27, 2017 12:55:12 GMT
Post by phicksur on Jun 27, 2017 12:55:12 GMT
It isn't difficult to kill bugs. You don't even need to 'open a door to outside'. Once the 'crop' is ready, you just stop feeding oxygen into it. The crickets would die of carbon dioxide poisoning and the lack of oxygen would also reduce, if not eliminate, any decomposition that might want to occur in the short term.
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Food
Jun 27, 2017 22:16:37 GMT
Post by petrv on Jun 27, 2017 22:16:37 GMT
IMO much better idea is to "open door" i.e. use the outside temperature to freeze them down - they will no go bad at least
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Food
Jul 10, 2017 10:25:52 GMT
Post by petrv on Jul 10, 2017 10:25:52 GMT
bigred - just to illustrate the crickets are not so bad choice, there is czech startup which already sells the protein bars made from cricket flour - you can check the nutrition/energy values here www.sensbar.com/en/product/sample-pack
To produce flour they freezing the crickets...easy on Moon surface/in space too.
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Food
Jul 12, 2017 19:31:08 GMT
Post by Mike on Jul 12, 2017 19:31:08 GMT
Interesting, although only 20% of bar is made from crickets. But if instead of pasta, they will be milled into flour, I see no problem with including it into large amount of possible dishes.
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Food
Jul 12, 2017 22:41:29 GMT
Post by petrv on Jul 12, 2017 22:41:29 GMT
I´m thinking about ordering some "samples" for "scientific taste testing"
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