I agree with the aeroponic potato concept. Very good staple, if you have to pick just one.
No fat, though (but fat is the most energy-dense food source, so would be efficient to transport that to Mars from Earth anyways).
Aquaculture is a wonderful idea if you can afford the mass budget of all the water.
Like I stated before the problem with lettuce, tomatoes, as well as other more complex forms of life is that they have grow slower, require more minerals, and are more sensitive to their environment, thus they require more resources.
In fact, the high productivity of aeroponics for a given system mass is the reason why NASA has devoted so much research into aeroponics...
Note that if you're using tilapia for food rather than directly using the algae for food, you cut your effective productivity by an order of magnitude.
I really think that specialized drugs like that are going to be the key to future off-world colonization techniques...
Lettuce, herbs, and tomatos ... peanuts ... beans ... potatos, rice, or wheat and you've got the basis for an tasty healthy diet. Corn is also a good food with a lot of flexibility, but it's a bit less trivial to properly process than the other staple starches.
Of course, the more variety of Earth lifeforms you bring to Mars the Moon, the greater the probability of forward-contamination of Mars the Moon.
Quote from: gbaikie on 10/07/2011 07:36 pmThe only filter I know that takes CO2 out of the air is a carbon activated filter. A carbon activated filter is good for taking any impurity out of the air. But these filters wear out and need to be replaced with fresh carbon activated filters. That's not a big problem bring lots of fresh filters- but getting the carbon dioxide captured from the air with these filter to the algae in the water is the part I don't know how one could do.We could skip the use of any other kind removable CO2 from the air if one could mix crew air with water of algae- just not sure what best way to do this in zero gee. In gravity you simply pump the air into the water- something similar those bubbly things in a fish tank. Perhaps one turn water into a mist- like garden hose. Do in a box and water will clump to together and you pump out the liquid water [enriched with CO2 of crew air]. If this is cold the crew air would not return to crew with much humidity and water will mix well with CO2.Edit: And/or simply remove humidity from crew air, and put that water in the algae water.Not that I like this idea at all but, carbon dioxide readily condenses with refrigeration and pressure so extracting it from the cabin air would not be a problem. The CO2, warmed back into a gas could be injected into a column of tank water slowly being pushed through a coil by a pump. The coil is to give it sufficient contact time for the CO2 to dissolve into the water. At the end of the coil the water enters a centrifuge where the water separates from the gases. That part is easy. Extracting the algae from the water.... that's the hard part. Too much water, too little algae. That way biofuels from algae hasn't gotten anywhere. Too hard to concentrate the algae.
The only filter I know that takes CO2 out of the air is a carbon activated filter. A carbon activated filter is good for taking any impurity out of the air. But these filters wear out and need to be replaced with fresh carbon activated filters. That's not a big problem bring lots of fresh filters- but getting the carbon dioxide captured from the air with these filter to the algae in the water is the part I don't know how one could do.We could skip the use of any other kind removable CO2 from the air if one could mix crew air with water of algae- just not sure what best way to do this in zero gee. In gravity you simply pump the air into the water- something similar those bubbly things in a fish tank. Perhaps one turn water into a mist- like garden hose. Do in a box and water will clump to together and you pump out the liquid water [enriched with CO2 of crew air]. If this is cold the crew air would not return to crew with much humidity and water will mix well with CO2.Edit: And/or simply remove humidity from crew air, and put that water in the algae water.
Lettuce, herbs, and tomatos have low caloric content. Various legumes offer good caloric content, in the form of a good balance of carbohydrates and complete proteins. They offer a wide variety of culinary possibilities, from raw/roasted/boiled peanuts and edamame to refried beans to hummus to various masalas to peanut butter.Add in aeroponic potatos, rice, or wheat and you've got the basis for an tasty healthy diet. (Corn is also a good food with a lot of flexibility, but it's a bit less trivial to properly process than the other staple starches.)As for the culinary possibilities of algae--there is actually a good range of tasty possibilities, at least if you're into Japanese food. Wakame and nori are pretty good straight, even if they're more typically eaten with other ingredients.
Many of these things you guys are mentioning take months to grow, thus the amount of space need to sustain even a small group of people is very significant.
You should understand the algae biofuels process before you make such assertions. Watch this.
Quote from: DarkenedOne on 10/08/2011 02:56 pmYou should understand the algae biofuels process before you make such assertions. Watch this.If I recall correctly, that company went out of business. It's not that algae can't be extracted from water but that the energy costs of doing so are too high, much like ethanol.
Tell that to Brazil who get a quarter of their auto fuel (by volume) from ethanol.
Just because a company went out of business doesn't mean the concept can't be made to work. Algae is largely the source for liquid fossil fuels, after all.
Now the conversation is getting pretty far afield... But the government subsidies can make sense if relying just on the conventional fuels (fossil fuel produced in other, potentially unstable, countries) has such considerable "externalities" that have a cost higher than just paying a subsidy for the alternative.I mean, how much does it cost the US gov't to protect the Strait of Hormuz? Saudi Arabia, etc? Just a for-instance. US energy companies which refine oil from those places don't pay for that directly (they pay via taxes... hypothetically), so it's called an "externality" (a cost that someone causes but doesn't have to pay except that everyone as a whole ends up paying for it... "tragedy of the commons," etc). If energy companies (and consumers at the pump) were burdened with the full cost of using mostly non-domestic fossil fuels, it might make the subsidies for alternatives look like chump change. Anyway, trying to bring it back on-topic a little more: Solar power isn't really a very inexpensive source of power on Earth's surface (compared to some alternatives), but at least in the inner solar system (not on a planetary body), solar power is basically by far the cheapest energy source. In the same way, algae production may not compete well with fossil fuels on Earth, but that has very little bearing whether it makes sense in space.
Quote from: DarkenedOne on 10/07/2011 04:27 pmQuote from: IsaacKuo on 10/07/2011 02:56 pmAquaculture is a wonderful idea if you can afford the mass budget of all the water. For example, if your mission requires long term high energy GCR shielding, then you might require 5 tons per square meter of water anyway.But if you need to conserve mass, aeroponics seem to be a more promising direction. Besides minimizing water mass, aeroponics also minimizes disease spread.All the water would be recycled.That's not the issue. The issue is that algae require a lot of water to live because they must be immersed in water. Aeroponic plants do not need to be immersed in water. Instead, they are immersed in air, which has a far lower density than water.Note that if you're using tilapia for food rather than directly using the algae for food, you cut your effective productivity by an order of magnitude. Each layer of a food chain is roughly an order of magnitude cut in efficiency. In contrast, aeroponic crops can be used directly for the entire diet--including complete proteins from a variety of legumes.
Quote from: IsaacKuo on 10/07/2011 02:56 pmAquaculture is a wonderful idea if you can afford the mass budget of all the water. For example, if your mission requires long term high energy GCR shielding, then you might require 5 tons per square meter of water anyway.But if you need to conserve mass, aeroponics seem to be a more promising direction. Besides minimizing water mass, aeroponics also minimizes disease spread.All the water would be recycled.
Aquaculture is a wonderful idea if you can afford the mass budget of all the water. For example, if your mission requires long term high energy GCR shielding, then you might require 5 tons per square meter of water anyway.But if you need to conserve mass, aeroponics seem to be a more promising direction. Besides minimizing water mass, aeroponics also minimizes disease spread.
Now if there was some way to convert the algae into a tasty vegetable, which we can eat more than 100g of? I suppose mushrooms can do this without additional energy?
1. Have some tilapia, from a supermarket, produced under the lowest input, lowest maintenance conditions that the profit motive can achieve.2. You are not allowed to use any other additives, ingredients or spices, not even salt.3. Read up on tilapia.4. Post again on the topic of tilapia and share your findings.