Date: September 9, 2011
Title: Menu For Mars
Podcaster: Bob Hirshon, AAAS
Organization: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Description: Science Update host Bob Hirshon speaks about in-flight dining options for a mission to Mars with Maya Cooper, Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Bios: Bob Hirshon is Senior Project Director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and host of the daily radio show and podcast Science Update. Now in its 24th year, Science Update is heard on over 300 commercial stations nationwide. Hirshon also heads up Kinetic City, including the Peabody Award winning children’s radio drama, McGraw-Hill book series and Codie Award winning website and education program. He oversees the Science NetLinks project for K-12 science teachers, part of the Verizon Foundation Thinkfinity partnership. Hirshon is a Computerworld/ Smithsonian Hero for a New Millennium laureate.
Sponsors: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by the Education and Outreach team for the MESSENGER mission to planet Mercury. Follow the mission as the spacecraft helps to unlock the secrets of the inner solar system at www.messenger-education.org
This episode of “365 Days Of Astronomy” has also been brought to you by Greg Dorais, “just because it’s a really cool podcast.”
Transcript:
Hirshon:
Welcome to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. I’m Bob Hirshon, host of the AAAS radio show and podcast Science Update. Meals for astronauts have gotten a lot more appetizing since the days of Tang and space food sticks. But they’re still not the sort of thing you’d want to live on for months or years. That’s one reason that researchers at the Johnson Space Center are developing methods for hydroponic gardening in space. Maya Cooper is a Senior Research Scientist working on the project.
Cooper:
A mars mission is expected to take 3 years, so from the time the crew leaves earth, to the time that they actually make it to the planet, do exploration and then have the return trip home would be about a three-year time span. And if you were to consider a lot of the food that we eat from the grocery store, it generally has a one-year time-span. Canned goods may last a little bit longer than that, but generally a lot of your shelf stable foods only last one year. Our current space foods system, the foods last anywhere from 18 months to 2 years. But that still doesn’t get us to the 3-year time frame. And so as we look to Mars and we look to a three-year time frame, where we have to be able to feed the crew consistently, then we’re forced to expand our boundaries as to what that food system needs to be.
Hirshon:
She says one option was to send food ahead for the astronauts.
Cooper:
So you actually put the food on a vehicle and have it orbit the planet until the crew gets there, at which point they would re-dock with the food supply, that might overcome a lot of the weight constraints of sending a pre-packaged food system.
Hirshon:
But the food would still be the same, boring, vacuum-packed stuff that’s bad enough to live on for a week, let alone years. So the team turned to hydroponic gardening.
Cooper:
The crew is actually responsible for gardening in space, growing a large portion of crops that they would need to sustain themselves, and these could include soybeans and lettuce and tomatoes and things of that nature.
Hirshon:
Cooper says that adding farming to the astronauts other responsibilities will be a significant addition to their work.
Cooper:
Because currently all of the food is already prepared—all they have to do is sort of heat and eat. With the Mars system you actually have to put time investment into agricultural practices, you’ll absolutely have to put time investment into food processing, food preparation, clean up, it’s a lot more time intensive food system, but because you have the food growing at the site, you don’t have to worry about the freshness of the food because you just picked it.
Hirshon:
Not only that, but growing plants would no doubt cheer up what could be a dreary trip through space. And Cooper says the mission already relies on plants for other reasons.
Cooper:
You would need the plants within the biosphere anyway to help you with some of your regeneration of oxygen from carbon dioxide, etc., so if you need plants, why not have food plants be a part of that system so that the crew does get that added benefit.
Hirshon:
The obvious question with hydroponic gardening, in which the plants are grown in nutrient rich water, with no soil, is how can you bring along all that additional water? But Cooper says water in their system is conserved so well, they can make it work.
Cooper:
A lot of the water is recycled within the system as it’s designed currently: the wastewater is recycled, water from the atmosphere, even what they exhale would be reclaimed and recycled through the system. Water can actually be found on Mars, there’s frozen water on Mars that could potentially be a source that the crew could tap into, as well as water that they would bring with them. So the water, although it would be a limited resource, is not the constraining resource of the mission at this time.
Hirshon:
She says a big part of the work she and her colleagues are conducting is determining exactly what sorts of crops are going to make the most sense for sustaining astronauts on the long mission, in the tight space.
Cooper:
What they particularly like to see are plants that are able to produce a high yield very quickly for obvious reasons—you want to be able to get the maximum amount of food material from the plant, and you want the turnover to be fairly quickly, because you want to have the food supply constantly regenerating itself. Having said that, you also need for the plants to be dwarf plants, they can’t be too tall, because then you wind up with a lot of stalky material that consumes the light resources, as well as the nutrient resources, that may not manifest itself into food material. So they look at high yield, dwarf plants, plants that are able to be grown in the limited atmosphere and lighting conditions that would be available.
Hirshon:
And along with high yields and cramped conditions, they need good nutrition and variety.
Cooper:
From the standpoint of nutrition we also have to make sure the plants that are chosen would provide the nutrients that we need, which is why soybean is such an important plant; because of its ability to provide the protein and carbohydrate source, it will be an important plant in terms of protein supply. We look at tomatoes just because it’s a fruit type plant, and a lot of the plants though they may be leafy vegetables, you would want the tomato just to add a little bit of variety, as well as some of the phytochemicals, etc., but a little bit of variety to the diet, as well.
Hirshon:
Beyond merely keeping the astronauts healthy and strong physically, Cooper points out that food plays a major role in psychology as well. Perhaps second only to human companionship, people who are isolated far from home complain most frequently about the food they miss.
Cooper:
Food is such an important part of the human experience, you know, you use it to celebrate holidays, and you use it to remind you of certain moments in your life, and so the food system will be a very important part of that mission. And how well we’re able to do our job will really speak to the psyche that the crew will have along the mission as well as how well their bodies will be able to perform the mission, cause we will have to meet the necessary nutrient requirements. And so it’s just exciting to look at all the different aspects and really make sure that it’s all coming together in a fashion that will allow the mission to be successful.
Hirshon:
It may be twenty years or more before humans undertake a trip to another planet. But when it happens, Maya Cooper and her colleagues will make sure they’ll have plenty to eat on the way. For the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast, I’m Bob Hirshon.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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