I cannot find a cite, but there is a freshwater algae, a plague in aquariums, that is eaten by indigenous people.
Not really - I set up a largely automated hydroponics garden in a vacant apartment in my building (and yes, I really did grow vegetables, not anything illicit) using largely recycled stuff, some grow lights, and a couple of timers. After that,it was just a matter of replacing fluid lost to evaporation/respiration and monitoring the nutrient mix every few weeks. Once it was set up I spent maybe an hour a week on it.
With a set up engineered by… well, real engineers… I expect it would be even more automated. It would still need some human oversight, and would have to be quite sizable, but it seems to me it’s all doable.
One advantage is total control over the environment, which would mean few or no pathogens, parasites, insects, rodents… Unless, of course, you want to grow some of those for protein.
Martian rats.
Jesus Christ, did you have to bring them up?
Holy crap.
Have you ever even tried to filet a test tube? Even done well you’d need thousands to get enough meat for a decent snack. ::indignant smiley::
Potatoes, mostly.
“Best damn ratburger I’ve ever tasted!”
Seriously, though, rats have followed humans everywhere else we’ve gone, I expect they will eventually get to Mars, too.
We don’t need to do it - we have the luxury of being able to grow crops with fairly complex lifecycles in the open air, in the natural soil - even for hydroponic setups on Earth, we are typically only taking one or two natural pieces out of the puzzle, but still relying on all the others.
A self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustaining crop cycle on a very small scale (such as in the Mars colony scenario) is different in many ways to everything we need to do at present.
Did you have a complete lifecycle in it? Did you produce seed for the next generation? That’s one of the hurdles that (IMO) makes it significantly more complex than culture of simpler organisms.
Well, yeah, I did take a paintbrush and pollinate some flowers and get seeds but it’s a pain in the butt. Still doable, though, and it didn’t take too long. I don’t see it as an insurmountable obstacle. It’s not like you have to have every single plant set seed, you just need enough for the next generation and that can be supplied by a small fraction of the total crop.
Some plants don’t require seeds for propagation (potatoes, for example).
There’s also fiddling stuff with some species that involve varying the light levels to induce flowering and such but, again, not rocket science.
There have been multi-year hydroponic set-ups in places like Antarctica so I expect most of the bugs have been worked out already.
Sprinulina is a major part of some folks diet.
I feed it to Tanganyikan aquarium fishes.
There is a difference between operating a small hydroponics garden for supplementary fruits and vegetables, and a large integrated, essentially self-sustaining agriculture and aquaculture facility required to provide all nutrition to an entire outpost or colony of people. It may not be “rocket science” but it is much more complex than a recreational hydroponics setup, and while not a showstopper or even in the Top 10 list of most difficult technologies needed to sustain a Martian colony, it is a critical capability which would have to be developed by both large scale engineering and empirical experience.
Stranger
Humans by and large perceive *spirulina *to taste horrible. There are exceptions, of course, even some cultures that have made extensive use of it, but if was forced to subsist on it I’d get really, really skinny because, frankly, I’ve smelled feces that were more appealing to me, and it’s not like I think shit is edible. I’m not sure you could build a diet around a “food” that most people perceive as disgusting.
Maybe we could feed it to the tilapia in an acquaponics set up?
Plant-based diets are nutritionally complete and only lack protein if you’re not doing it right.
I make no representation of how difficult that might be on Mars, however…I just don’t want casual readers to assume you need animal flesh for protein.
Right. And as noted, there have been multi-year set ups to work out the long-term mechanics of such system in places like Antarctica already. There is much out there, but I picked this article out of a quick Google search as I felt it illustrated both the benefits and problems of these set ups. Unquestionably, these facilities provide fresh food through the long Antarctic winter when re-supply is unlikely at best, but if they fail entirely no one will outright starve as the stations also have emergency supplies.
Some of the problems they had - inadequate light, humidity problems, and so forth - are not unknown with home/“recreational” set ups although I never had to worry about my lettuce freezing between growing tray and table. The species that did well or didn’t do well in home hydroponics likewise had a similar track record in the Antarctic stations (although home hydroponic enthusiasts have developed strategies targeted at specific species such as tomatoes, but the vegetables that seem more problematic are actually fruit that requires pollination to grow, like tomatoes and peppers). Certainly there are issues with scaled-up versions of hydroponics vs. home set ups made from recycled bits and pieces but there is also some common ground as well.
One additional benefit is that working in a hydroponic garden apparently has beneficial psychological effects on humans in hostile environments, so it may be advantageous to NOT totally automate such a system, or only have total automation as a back up for when humans are truly too busy to attend to things.
You do, however, need animal sourced food for vitamin B12.
Granted, you need very little of it for adequate amounts of B12, and artificial supplements that provide sufficient quantity of B12 for a colony for years probably could be shipped along with everything else. In addition, B12 could be obtained from sources like insects or rodents grown strictly for that or for a protein supplement, but it is required and the only natural source is other animals. Bring along some sort of insect that can consume parts of the hydro/aquaponics crops humans can’t and you’ll have a win-win solution on that front.
Although I agree that a complete set of constituent proteins can be found in plant-based diets, protein is more nutritionally accessible in the form of animal products (flesh, dairy, eggs, et cetera) or from highly processed vegetable product. And of course, cholesterols and some types of ‘good’ fats are not found in vegetable products in any significant quantity; while not crucial for immediate nutrition I think that this would have a long-term impact upon nutritional health in an environment that is already challenging (low gravity, lack of natural sunlight, et cetera). I don’t believe there has ever been a genuinely vegan culture in history, which argues empirically against the desirability of relying on a purely vegetable-based diet, especially in a mission critical application where backup sustenance is limited or not available. And PCRM is far from an objective source of support on this issue as their entire mandate is focused on promoting veganism and elimination of animal testing and use.
In the interests of self-sufficiency and assured health I am strongly of the thought that you would want to plan to have some kind of animal products in the nutrient cycle, and the more diverse (within the limitations of the system) the better.
Stranger
I’m inclined to agree. A full protein profile would be essential, and ideally, you’d want it from as much variety as possible. A variety of small, hardy, containable animals would be reasonable–perhaps both fish and crawfish in an aquaponics setup, and maybe small rodents or insects fed on remaining plant litter and other scraps. Larger animals would be impractical unless and until the colony grew a great deal.
(My point in my previous post was simply to argue that one shouldn’t dismiss grains out of hand as part of the solution, not that they would provide complete nutrition on their own.)
I read the title as “Martin Luther King Jr, what/how would Mars colonists eat?” I was expecting a very different thread. Actually, I have no idea what I was expecting.
Apparently there are fermentation-based, non-animal sources of B12, but I think insect livestock would probably be simpler (and better for proteins, fats etc anyway).
There is debate on whether or not the body can effectively utilize those non-animal sources of B12. Given that raising something like crickets or mice is pretty damn easy we might be better off going with what is certain in the case rather than experimenting further in an already experiment-filled situation.