Check this out! Scientists are experimenting with growing meat in tanks for long space voyages. Some of us vegetarians will be able to eat meat again. Yay!
There’s one potential obstacle to the practicality of this method that the article didn’t mention.
The problem with food on a long space mission (e.g. to Mars or beyond) is the cost of transporting the mass. If the stuff they ‘grow’ the meat in, masses almost as much as the quantity of meat they grow, then they haven’t gained much.
It sounds like the main use of ‘growing’ meat might be guilt-free meat for vegetarians who’d really like a burger every now and then, but abstain from animal products mostly for ethical reasons.
Well, don’t forget the freshness issue, RT. If you can grow it in transit you don’t have to provide for storage of dehydrated or otherwsie preserved meats during the trip. Just grow it from articles that won’t spoil in transit and BANG, cost saving (and maybe space savings, too!)
But the main application will be to hit up the vegetarians for hamburger purchases, you’re right.
I agree that terrestrial applications will prove the most practical. Can anybody make an educated guess what components would be needed for the meat machines? Could we get the materials from the moon or whatnot? Also, this may sound icky, but I wonder if they could derive the growth serum from human instead of cow blood.
Or better, growth serum from artificial sources, to keep PETA really happy.
Growth serum consists mostly of something that’s going to have to be dragged along, anyway: Water. If you can create a non-blood-based serum, then all you have to do is recycle, and you’re in good shape. You’ll still have to drag along the other components, though (some which might be reprocessed from faeces…).
Terrestrial, or at least ‘stationary’, applications seem more likely, however.
From that site:
Yeah. Vegetarians are going to love this stuff.