Sometimes you are better off not asking where your food came from. Say your steward on your space flight to Mars ask you if you would like some dungemite on your toast? What will you say? Read this post before you answer.

Long-Haul Space Flights

To limit cargo room and conserve as much as possible on deep-space flights astronauts could eat goo made from their poo. Oh.. come now, it's just a smear of 'microbial goo', a bit like Marmite or Vegemite

Researchers at Penn State are serious. They have developed a system that combines microbes with human waste to create food.

Image Source

The 4 foot long cylindrical test system the researchers developed incorporates a process used often by municipalities to treat waste here on Earth. Inside the cylinder waste is exposed to microbes that break the waste down through anaerobic digestion. As the microbes breakdown the waste methane is produced to grow Mehtylococcus capsulatus. Mehtylococcus capsulatus are microbes used in animal feed. The microbes provide a good mixture of protein and fat.

Image Source

Using the researcher's reactor system to transform waste into food is faster than waiting for tomatoes or potatoes to grow.

Recycling on the Internation Space Station (ISS)

Image Source

On board the ISS astronauts already recycle urine into drinkable water. But, currently, poo from the ISS is discharged to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

NASA Grants

NASA is looking for creative solutions, like the microbe reactor developed by Penn State researchers, for sustaining astronauts on an eventual deep-space human mission to Mars.

Sources and Full Articles

Astronauts could one day eat goo made from their poo, CNET.com, 29 January 2018

Coupling of anaerobic waste treatment to produce protein- and lipid-rich bacterial biomass, Science Direct, Life Sciences in Space Research, Vol. 15, November 2017, pp. 32-42

Thank You!

If you like this post, you can upvote, follow, share, and re-steem this post.
Thank you!