we are going back to the moon and back to Mars astronauts already selected and whenever we do we
are gonna need to eat a trip to Mars they're gonna be there three to five years they have to bring
all the food for the whole trip with them which means if we're shipping them food that's thousands
of kilograms we could save so much money and time and worry about decay and sickness if we have them
grow food themselves to farm like in star trek voyage or hydroponics or something so excited
today how are we going to eat on other planets what are we going to eat because surely not cows
are astronauts going to be vegetarian because that might be a thing that we have to do because we
can't take chickens to Mars this is going to be so cool so let's kick into it and find out what's up
hi hi hi hi welcome to episode five of five on eating good in the galactic neighborhood we have
talked all about food and how much it costs to eat vegetarian versus meats we've talked
about oh my god so many different things over the last five episodes go back and watch them if you
haven't already space food actually reflects the era of space travel that you're in so here's how
it started here's how it's going I had to meme a little bit a little bit so the first human to
eat in space was yuri gagarin he was eating two servings of pureed meat and then one of chocolate
sauce for dessert all out of a tube yuck the first american was john glenn he had applesauce out of a
tube duple sauce yuck all throughout the mercury program and early russian programs tube food was
the thing it was literally pureed and put in a tube during the gemini program or gemini as my
friend amy sure title would say we were eating freeze-dried food made with cryo-desiccation
today the space food division in houston has over 200 different meals that the nasa astronauts can
pick and of course there are different meals for different astronauts from different countries
the first mexican astronaut flew and asked about tortillas and now that's the only bread product
they had they couldn't eat bread before it was too crummy and would fly over and get in the
instrument yay diversity it made astronauts life better freeze drying is essentially the best of
flash frozen and dehydrated frozen maintains flavor and preservatives dehydration preserves
for longer takes about a week to make freeze dried food and if well done the food can last
20 years we can use the water on board the spacecraft to rehydrate it and that allows
us to eat all sorts of food in space fruit and vegetables are popular juices and soups are eaten
in space meatballs peanut butter and jam shrimp cocktail is a favorite amongst modern astronauts
humans have to eat it's not just to sustain our bodies you know we can't just give all astronauts
milkshakes that contain all our nutrients the psychology of eating is really important
and the kicker here is that every single food item for the last 70 years every food eaten
in space more or less except a couple exceptions came from earth it was shipped to space so knowing
that you can't live in low earth orbit forever you need to learn a few things like how to grow plants
in space the advanced plant experiment or apex has been going for a long time now it's about a
suitcase sized box with reddish pink lights in it to make sure that we can grow food in
space because there's no rule that says it should the first harvest of lettuce grown in space was
in 2014. this is that one little exception I was talking about they harvested and ate it literally
right there out of the machine sure there was a lot of approvals required for them to be able to
do that obviously you can't just wash vegetables under the sink in space so instead they had to
wipe the leaves with sanitizing wipes space not exactly the most exciting or luxurious place
next up they want to grow dragoon lettuce wasabi mustard russian kale tomatoes and
peppers are on the list too and a private company I spoke to said they're working on radishes in
space which is divisive I like radishes but a lot of people don't make some people fart
maybe not the best in space probably though you remember the martian potatoes growing in space
on Mars we'll get there the thing is that growing a flat food like lettuce is much easier in space
think of it as a one-dimensional food it doesn't have to grow a lot of thickness solid bulbous
foods they are different no gravity could affect them in a more complex way than it does a thin
food like lettuce of course we'll know soon enough even if they grow peppers kale radish and tomatoes
in space there's no way to fry them up yet on top of that you need to learn how to grow other stuff
like berries and beans and it's an issue for deep space missions we don't want astronauts getting
scurvy when they're away on Mars for months and they can't just take supplements for it it's
amazing that we could be talking about agriculture on another planet at all but the fact that we're
talking about this futuristic idea of Living on Mars with this ancient idea of growing food
while we live there and this is in part because like we talked about in episode two of this show
we don't have replicators we don't have a way to have a globalized industrial food system to feed
astronauts they'd have to do it themselves if we're going to get them food on another planet
we're going to need new ideas so luckily there was a paper titled feeding 1 million people on Mars
and they thought this through and they determined there is a mix of three things that you need
vegetables insect products bioreactor products yum vegetables this is the ISS system that I mentioned
apex and veggie you would scale that up like the martian again you would have astronauts becoming
farmers which may seem boring but for them might be psychologically beneficial seeing something
earth grow develop harvest birth grow you know that we evolved with that cycle and it could be
beneficial to all of us a simple static ship in space works in the movies but in reality it's
psychologically a little bit of a downer if we grow them in underground greenhouses for
warmth and radiation protection then the martian soil we think could grow food at least based on
what we know nasa and the international potato center awesome which is a team in peru potatoes
are native to south america fyi they took desert soil which is inhospitable to life and they put
a potato plant inside of a sealed container in extreme conditions using special lights and they
grew a potato so even though the martian is not fact Mars taters might be a thing and this is a
good step the problem is it probably had microbes even in that soil that was inhospitable from a
desert and microbes work with the plants in the nitrogen cycle maybe you remember from elementary
school so no microbes equals no nitrogen equals no plants human poop is not the magic ingredient
on top of that soil which exists here on earth does not exist on other planets they call their
topsoil regolith and Mars dirt or regolith doesn't have that light airy texture of earth
soil soil is like a sponge it swells with water absorbs and holds stuff regular stimulant in
one experiment mixed with water and got hard like concrete not the best for growing a plant in fact
all the plants they tried to grow and it died on top of that Mars dirt has calcium perchlorate in
it a toxic substance that is deadly to plants so that's a big deal like I said there's no rule that
anything will grow in space with a lot of hurdles to jump they evolved here we have to figure out
how to get them to live there either way once we figure out plants the next on the list insects
you could also grow these in tunnels I'm guessing the insects don't require a lot of land or
water to produce lots of biomass crickets are high in protein and can be converted into protein
powder that can be added to lots of different foods to make sure you have nutrients and you can
perhaps even bring insects that consume waste and products from farms and dwellings which would help
a lot because it's not like you're gonna be able to throw stuff away easily on Mars then of course
finally bioreactor products which sounds gross but we talked about it earlier in episode three
lab-grown meat plant-based meat you can't bring chickens and goats to space they graze a lot they
would need a huge amount of plant food in order to sustain themselves just so you could then eat them
instead lab-grown meat make it in a bioreactor no waste products just energy to produce food
you also don't run into that one thousand pound cow makes 440 pounds of meat problem those
three things together could mean a sustainable population on Mars and they looked at it up to
a million people something not thought about in this paper is plant-based meats plant-based milks
bioreactor-grown fish proteins there might be a lot of vegetarians on Mars or even vegans because
there likely won't be any animals on Mars and thus no animal products probably all the plants on Mars
would be hybrids modified to grow well in harsh environments maybe they'll take genes from desert
plants and mix them with high yield plants just like Borlaug's wheat that I mentioned earlier but
for space it's just gonna be humans plants technology and bacteria all trying to survive
together one of the harshest environments we can imagine if we ever go to deep space
out of earth shipping distance then it'll really be exciting because that's all hypothetical we
have no idea what we would eat then unless we can invent replicators literal ones not the one
dollar hamburger magic of the 21st century just think though at one point in time that one dollar
hamburger was the future that was some imagining of a small business owner I'm a small business
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small business classes like holly's she helps people who want to start a small business find
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who are lifelong learners and honestly I think that sounds like you so try it let me know what
you think and thanks let's get back to the series honestly though even if there was a way to get
meat to space we'd probably go through the same issues we had in the 20th century we would want
meat and then we would use economics to get it then we'll have meat plus classism plus economics
and evolution will not have changed us by then so we'll just end up with the same problems that
we have here on earth if we want to go to Mars or anywhere else we don't need to learn how to make
meat there we need to learn how to bring new lifestyles there new ideas
insects for protein algae for nutrients and if we want to live there long term we humans we need to
be better and honestly that would apply here at home too we need to do better if we want to
live here just as much as if we want to live there space is just an analog for living better on earth
so why can't we do that now after five episodes of this series we know so much more about food and
we thought about it so much deeper vegetables are cheaper to buy and eat you can be better
for the environment by buying more vegetables and eating less meat if you want to life on another
planet you're going to have to learn to love vegetables globalization has made possible all
sorts of futuristic achievements like one dollar cheeseburgers and replicators don't exist yet but
the idea of a food item that's on demand and encompasses vegetables fruits breads meats
sugars fats all for a dollar is crazy and damaging we learned that we are borrowing
from the future to feed the now and that is never going to last we have so much space
and so much time to make structural changes in our lives and our cultures to be able to work together
and have as many people on this planet fed and on the next planet
and the one after that the future of food is weird right insects plant-based meats bio-reactor
products but of course white bread bananas ruby red grapefruit and peanut butter were all weird
at one point these days they're commonplace I hope you love this series I really loved learning all
about it I am trace thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the future