Feeding humans hurtling through space isn’t easy.
While today’s astronauts get to eat high quality cuisine made on earth by some of the world’s best cooks, space travel in the future will require entirely new approaches that can grow enough food in space to produce sufficient calories and nutrients for astronaut crews on multiyear interplanetary missions.
Which is why there’s growing interest from the space agencies from the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries to find new and novel food system concepts that can keep astronauts and eventually even permanent space inhabitants fed.
To discuss the current and future state of space food, I recently got together with Anjan Contractor, the CEO of BeeHex, a company who created a 3D pizza printer for NASA. Also joining us was Dane Gobel, the operations administrator for the Deep Space Food Challenge, a new initiative by NASA and the Canadian space agency to spur innovation in developing new food systems for long-term space travel.
Some of the things we discuss on the podcast:
- The challenges of creating food systems for space
- How astronauts need a variety of food types and nutrients (including fresh food) to maintain long term physiological and psychological health
- How new technologies like cultivated meat and proteins will play a pivotal role in space food in the future
- The requirements and goals of the Deep Space Food Challenge
And much more!
You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen by clicking the player below.
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