Hey, we just landed on Mars and I sure am ready to grow some wheat and soybeans!!
Actually, I am kidding on that one, sorry NASA.
Farming of any sort would be the absolute
last thing I'd want to be doing if I landed on Mars, the Moon or any other body in the solar system. Also farming would be the
last thing I'd want to watch astronauts on Mars, the Moon or any other body in the Solar System do from here on Earth (if NASA or private organizations planning such inter-planetary trips and human outposts are seeking to maintain any kind of Earth-based audience for these efforts, then they should take note).
I can almost guarantee you that NASA astronauts, Russian Cosmonauts, Chinese Takonauts and private space visitors would say the same thing (But the astronauts and their like don't want to speak up about it lest they rub somebody in charge the wrong way and lose their place in the schedule)
So what is my "work-around" when it comes to feeding astronauts on missions that
extend for say, two years?
Well, let's look at how I, an average joe of 6'1" and 170lbs eats day-to-day down here on Earth. I frankly subsist quite happily on the following: Met-Rx bars, Cliff bars, peanut-butter-on-tortilla sandwhiches, filtered water, coffee, and dried fruit.
Yes I am definitely more "eat-to-live, than "live-to-eat." But the thing is, I've been eating like that for probably the last 15 years!! And it doesn't really bother me. My health is good according to my physicians and I am quite physically active.
So let's say I am going to Mars for a two year round trip. I'll need approximately 3 meals a day x 730 days. Ok so around a total of 2200 meals at say 700-800 calories a piece for a total of 2100-2400 calories a day. Let's be on the safe-side and bring 3000 meals and lets bump the total available calories per day to 3000-3500, since I'll presumably be a busy astronaut down there on the red planet.
Yes, we'd have to launch quite a few food bars, jars of peanut butter and flat bread, coffee grounds, raisins and so forth to cover my nutritional needs and those of other astronauts. But you know, that would beat the heck out of rolling the dice and suiting up to farm soybeans in some inflatable contraption on "Eagle crater." And I doubt it would be any more or less expensive to do.
So, I have to say that I am not too keen on the idea of farming on Mars or the Moon, at least not in the initial years of human ventures to those planets.
This site is like a clsarsoom, except I don't hate it. lol
Posted by: Jonnie | 08/15/2011 at 12:13 AM
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