Make “food” from raw materials anywhere in the solar system
Flowers, there are whole “food production” technologies that can make edible materials for humans and related species. Taking wood and stems to make alcohol for fuel, there are industrial and sustainable industries to make sugars, starches – pretty much whatever you want.
Perhaps what you are struggling with is “Is photosynthesis necessary?” or “Do we have to eat animals, animal products, insects, and living things to survive?”.
I am so used to profiling technologies, it is just a few hours to find the current set of “novel food technologies” that can take raw materials and convert them to foods. The map of what already is being done or tried is substantial.
For “solar systems exploration and development” it will be necessary to NOT haul water around. Mars has lots of carbon and oxygen. Even the moon, if you use atomic energy for processing regolith has lots of oxygen. But using chemistry to make foods is definitely possible, if you are careful and motivated enough to do it efficiently. There are many “sustainable pathways” now, but we are not training and equipping all humans to use those methods.
( “disruptive” “food technologies” ) has 16,500 entrie
( “food production technologies” ) has 178,000 entries
( “novel food production” ) has 107,000 entries
( “food production” ) has 63 Million
( “food production” “cellular” ) has 1.35 Million
( “food production” “bacterial” ) has 2.64 Million
( “food production” “microbial” ) has 3.7 Million
( “food production” “from coal” ) has 112 Million
( “coal to protein” ) has 11,600
( “make food from chemicals” has 2,410
( “wood to food” ) has 99,400
( “biosynthesis” ) has 89.2 Million
I could probably list a few thousand ways people have talked about this and tried it. I have studied chemistry for 60 years now, and set up the Famine Early Warning System, so I care about feeding the world and have looked at most of the ways to do it. For countries with only desert, they can use nuclear or solar energy, import raw materials and convert to “food”. Even “vegetables to meat” is already growing. “Synthetic meat” has been around a long time.
You can use nuclear fission or fusion to make heat that drives chemical reactions. Or geothermal or solar heat to drive chemical reactions. If the products or feeds are “biological” then you can make “food”. Or make it “from scratch” from inorganics like carbon dioxide and water.
You need carbon nitrogen sulfur oxygen and a few other things. It does not matter (except financial and skills) what you use for a source. Import weeds and make “food”. The combinations are not infinite, but model the project completely and there are lots of possibilities.
For Mars, they have carbon dioxide and lots of water. It likely had life before. It does not matter, the stuff is there. For Venus there is lot of carbon dioxide and a bit of water. People suggested making farms and refineries in cities floating in the clouds.
For me, none of these things is hard. With true-AIs, anyone can try. With effort and dedication, anything is possible. You have to set your lifetime priorities and choose to work hard.
Filed as (Make “food” from raw materials anywhere in the solar system)
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
