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>Leafy greens are ideal, ready to be consumed as soon as they’re plucked [...] The most outlandish crops would be wheat and rice. [...P]lants that need processi

by zeteo 13y ago

>Leafy greens are ideal, ready to be consumed as soon as they’re plucked [...] The most outlandish crops would be wheat and rice. [...P]lants that need processing make less attractive candidates for space travel. Well, these "outlandish" cereal crops currently provide the bulk of calories for almost everyone on the planet. If you're serious about feeding astronauts in space, they are exactly the plants that you need to start with. And don't tell me equipment to grind wheat or hull rice would be complicated, compared with other stuff that's in orbit already.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
If you are serious about feeding astronauts in space, then you need to classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the whole plant and needs the least mass of things like water. Leafy plants with minimal root systems seem like a good start. Grains have loads of stalk and root that you don't eat, tend to need a lot of water and need extra equipment in preparation and are often used as powders, which easily form combustible suspensions in low gravity.
- zeteo 13y ago
  >you need to classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the whole plant and needs the least mass of things like water Maybe if you don't care about total area. Stalks and all, grains and tubers are the most efficient at transforming square footage of sunlight into edible calories; water would get completely recycled in any case.
  - azernik 13y ago
    Square footage of sunlight is not necessarily the limiting factor in space as it is on earth; (solar) energy for grow lights is cheap, pressurized volume is very very expensive. And even if water is recycled, tying a certain amount of it up in your food production system still has a cost.
    - flogic 13y ago
      Scaling to sustainable numbers though heat rejection will be a serious consideration. Plants essentially convert light to chemical energy that would then sustain the astronauts. The catch is plants aren't really that efficient. They're around 1% if I remember rightly. That means there would be 99 people worth of additional heat for each one you're feeding full time.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        Trying to argue on the basis of photosynthesis being inefficient doesn't really help, I mean sure PV is more efficient in energy conversion, but you can't eat electricity. So given they'd be eating plants anyway, eating ones that have not been shot up the gravity well is probably more efficient.
        flogic 13y ago
        My point was that for the current ISS, you're talking about designing, building, launching, and attaching more infrastructure.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >Leafy plants with minimal root systems seem like a good start. yes, or one can consider potatoes. 2-3 times higher calorie/water efficiency than grains.
cmsmith 13y ago
The calculus for what plants make sense in space is entirely different than what plants make sense on earth. Cereals provide the bulk of earth calories because they optimize things like warm days, long term storage, transportation, water consumption, etc. The critical resources in space are things like 3D space, waste, preparation requirements, or even smell, so it would make no sense to choose space crops based on what stacks best in a grain silo.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  We didn't choose to farm grains based on what would stack best in a grain silo. We built grain silos because we liked grain so much. Lettuce is mostly water; you won't be able to feed even one person on it, no matter how efficiently you can grow it.
  - beambot 13y ago
    I don't think that's true -- we didn't choose grain because "we like it so much". Grain is easy to store and has a long shelf life, which means it can last long enough to get you through the long non-growing seasons. When you scale up production, you need somewhere to put it... hence silos. By way of another analogy: refrigeration is the motivating force behind much of the food we consume now. In my grandmother's day, all food post-harvest was either dried (grains and meats), canned, or pickled.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      This is fair. We chose grain because we hated starving to death in the winter. But we like grain now! History and evolution are on its side at this point. Refrigeration enables us to eat many things that people two generations ago literally couldn't, but I note that cereals are still a very large portion of what we, in all our riches, choose to eat. My family eats a lot of bread, without bothering to refrigerate it. Some things that we refrigerate now, but historically didn't have to, are eggs and milk. Do you know how those were treated in your grandmother's day? The image I have from history is that milk was produced and consumed in large quantities, and "refrigerated" (iceboxed) then as now. But clearly (?), what was good enough for milk was too good for... lettuce? ;) Just as a fun side observation, there are some other obvious concerns, if you're starting from a hunter-gatherer state: jerky keeps significantly better than grain does, and is packed full of calories, and is ultra-low-tech, but grain production can be scaled up in a way that would be extremely difficult for jerky. So we built granaries and tolerated massive losses to rats essentially because even after the losses we could produce more grain than "other food".
jere 13y ago
I agree with your criticism, at least against the article as written. By volume, potatoes (the 2nd option beyond leafy greens according to NASA) have 30x the calories as lettuce. I don't see how the math could ever work out. In fact, potatoes might be a good optionally nutritionally. Chris Voigt went on an all potato diet for 60 days and seemingly suffered no ill effects: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with-chris-voigt-of-20.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with... I wouldn't want to see someone try the same thing with lettuce.
- alanctgardner2 13y ago
  Potatoes, milk and molybdenum[1]. Considering powdered milk is pretty light, this might be first-generation space chow. They've got a lot of free time to eat dozens of pounds of potatoes anyways. 1. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-survive-on-nothing-but-potatoes-and-milk http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-surviv...
Shivetya 13y ago
I would aim for equipment likely to have less complications, traditional methods for grinding most grains kicks up a lot of fine particles so the filtration of those particles would be a big concern. I do not know much about rice harvesting, but would not wheat have to be effectively dried to replicate what happens in nature before it would be harvested? Now, cooking them down might be an option more suited, either that or most food prep is going to be done clean room style, isolated from the rest of the area. If we go along the route of wet, cannot some sea products be used as substitutes? Also, the idea of using various combinations of plants to replicate existing animal products is coming along well, there are artificial egg products coming to market. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416808/Artificial-egg-PLANTS-backed-Bill-Gates-set-revolutionize-cooking-goes-sale-Whole-Foods.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416808/Artif...

by zeteo 13y ago

moocowduckquack 13y ago

If you are serious about feeding astronauts in space, then you need to classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the whole plant and needs the least mass of things like water. Leafy plants with minimal root systems seem like a good start. Grains have loads of stalk and root that you don't eat, tend to need a lot of water and need extra equipment in preparation and are often used as powders, which easily form combustible suspensions in low gravity.

zeteo 13y ago
>you need to classify what gives the highest percentage edible matter in the whole plant and needs the least mass of things like water Maybe if you don't care about total area. Stalks and all, grains and tubers are the most efficient at transforming square footage of sunlight into edible calories; water would get completely recycled in any case.
- azernik 13y ago
  Square footage of sunlight is not necessarily the limiting factor in space as it is on earth; (solar) energy for grow lights is cheap, pressurized volume is very very expensive. And even if water is recycled, tying a certain amount of it up in your food production system still has a cost.
  - flogic 13y ago
    Scaling to sustainable numbers though heat rejection will be a serious consideration. Plants essentially convert light to chemical energy that would then sustain the astronauts. The catch is plants aren't really that efficient. They're around 1% if I remember rightly. That means there would be 99 people worth of additional heat for each one you're feeding full time.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      Trying to argue on the basis of photosynthesis being inefficient doesn't really help, I mean sure PV is more efficient in energy conversion, but you can't eat electricity. So given they'd be eating plants anyway, eating ones that have not been shot up the gravity well is probably more efficient.
      - flogic 13y ago
        My point was that for the current ISS, you're talking about designing, building, launching, and attaching more infrastructure.
VladRussian2 13y ago
>Leafy plants with minimal root systems seem like a good start. yes, or one can consider potatoes. 2-3 times higher calorie/water efficiency than grains.

cmsmith 13y ago

The calculus for what plants make sense in space is entirely different than what plants make sense on earth. Cereals provide the bulk of earth calories because they optimize things like warm days, long term storage, transportation, water consumption, etc. The critical resources in space are things like 3D space, waste, preparation requirements, or even smell, so it would make no sense to choose space crops based on what stacks best in a grain silo.

thaumasiotes 13y ago
We didn't choose to farm grains based on what would stack best in a grain silo. We built grain silos because we liked grain so much. Lettuce is mostly water; you won't be able to feed even one person on it, no matter how efficiently you can grow it.
- beambot 13y ago
  I don't think that's true -- we didn't choose grain because "we like it so much". Grain is easy to store and has a long shelf life, which means it can last long enough to get you through the long non-growing seasons. When you scale up production, you need somewhere to put it... hence silos. By way of another analogy: refrigeration is the motivating force behind much of the food we consume now. In my grandmother's day, all food post-harvest was either dried (grains and meats), canned, or pickled.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    This is fair. We chose grain because we hated starving to death in the winter. But we like grain now! History and evolution are on its side at this point. Refrigeration enables us to eat many things that people two generations ago literally couldn't, but I note that cereals are still a very large portion of what we, in all our riches, choose to eat. My family eats a lot of bread, without bothering to refrigerate it. Some things that we refrigerate now, but historically didn't have to, are eggs and milk. Do you know how those were treated in your grandmother's day? The image I have from history is that milk was produced and consumed in large quantities, and "refrigerated" (iceboxed) then as now. But clearly (?), what was good enough for milk was too good for... lettuce? ;) Just as a fun side observation, there are some other obvious concerns, if you're starting from a hunter-gatherer state: jerky keeps significantly better than grain does, and is packed full of calories, and is ultra-low-tech, but grain production can be scaled up in a way that would be extremely difficult for jerky. So we built granaries and tolerated massive losses to rats essentially because even after the losses we could produce more grain than "other food".

jere 13y ago

I agree with your criticism, at least against the article as written. By volume, potatoes (the 2nd option beyond leafy greens according to NASA) have 30x the calories as lettuce. I don't see how the math could ever work out. In fact, potatoes might be a good optionally nutritionally. Chris Voigt went on an all potato diet for 60 days and seemingly suffered no ill effects: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with-chris-voigt-of-20.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with... I wouldn't want to see someone try the same thing with lettuce.

alanctgardner2 13y ago
Potatoes, milk and molybdenum[1]. Considering powdered milk is pretty light, this might be first-generation space chow. They've got a lot of free time to eat dozens of pounds of potatoes anyways. 1. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-survive-on-nothing-but-potatoes-and-milk http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-surviv...

Shivetya 13y ago

I would aim for equipment likely to have less complications, traditional methods for grinding most grains kicks up a lot of fine particles so the filtration of those particles would be a big concern. I do not know much about rice harvesting, but would not wheat have to be effectively dried to replicate what happens in nature before it would be harvested? Now, cooking them down might be an option more suited, either that or most food prep is going to be done clean room style, isolated from the rest of the area. If we go along the route of wet, cannot some sea products be used as substitutes? Also, the idea of using various combinations of plants to replicate existing animal products is coming along well, there are artificial egg products coming to market. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416808/Artificial-egg-PLANTS-backed-Bill-Gates-set-revolutionize-cooking-goes-sale-Whole-Foods.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416808/Artif...