There are plenty of tough problems NASA has to crop out before it can post cosmonaut on retentive - term manned foreign mission to planets like Mars , but one of the biggest questions is sustenance . When we have sent robot toMars , the trip has taken aroundeight months , but it command no food . If we were to send humans out into space for months at a time , they would call for to either pack or grow enough food to keep them from starve for the integral continuance of their mission . One reply may lie in in our toilets , asThe Independentreports .
In a study in the journalLife Sciences in Space Research , Penn State University astrobiologists report that with a little microbial magic , they can potentially move around wastewater into solid food . Using the methane bring forth during an anaerobiotic waste treatment process ( a oxygen - freetechniquealready used to handle Earthly sewerage ) , they were capable to culture three bacterial species , two of which — Methylococcus capsulatusandThermus aquaticus — soften " protein- and lipide - rich biomass that can be directly consumed , " according to the study . Yum .
InThe Independent , Penn State professorChristopher Housedescribes the result " microbial slime " as being kind of likeVegemiteorMarmite . In theory , you could either eat it by itself — poop goner , anyone?—or apply it as a high - protein supplementation to feed Pisces the Fishes , insects , or other live intellectual nourishment sources .
plenitude of testing remains to be done before this type of microbial smorgasbord could be made into human food at all , much less deployed on a spacecraft , where everything has to be dead engineered to balance spaceman ' needs with outer space and weight consideration to stay fuel - effective . But in Europe , the germ isalready approvedto provender fish , squealer , and other farmed animals , so it would n’t be a stint to intend it could feed creature on a blank space ship . Whether astronauts will be eating it for months on end will have to be seen .
[ h / tThe Independent ]
