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Microbes may help astronauts transform human waste into food
Human waste may one day be a valuable resource for astronauts on deep-space missions. Now, a Penn State research team has shown that it is possible to rapidly break down solid and liquid waste to grow food with a series of microbial reactors, while simultaneously minimizing pathogen growth.
"We envisioned and tested the concept of simultaneously treating astronauts' waste with microbes while producing a biomass that is edible either directly or indirectly depending on safety concerns," said Christopher House, professor of geosciences, Penn State. "It's a little strange, but the concept would be a little bit like Marmite or Vegemite where you're eating a smear of 'microbial goo.'"
[...] "Each component is quite robust and fast and breaks down waste quickly," said House. "That's why this might have potential for future space flight. It's faster than growing tomatoes or potatoes."
Today, astronauts aboard the International Space Station recycle a portion of water from urine, but the process is energy intensive, said House. Solid waste management has been a bigger hurdle. This currently is ejected into the Earth's atmosphere where it burns up.
"Imagine if someone were to fine-tune our system so that you could get 85 percent of the carbon and nitrogen back from waste into protein without having to use hydroponics or artificial light," said House. "That would be a fantastic development for deep-space travel."
Coupling of anaerobic waste treatment to produce protein- and lipid-rich bacterial biomass (DOI: 10.1016/j.lssr.2017.07.006) (DX)
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:39AM (2 children)
Should be easy to turn into chocolate pudding, it already has the proper color and depending on have regular they are and the consistency of space-poop they might have texture and viscosity down to. Just add flavor. But then considering they already drink pee and do other weird things for science perhaps it won't be a deterrent to space travel.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday January 30 2018, @07:04AM
If you want to go down this line, go full "Human centipede" and save the energy cost for flavoring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:36PM
We all drink our own pee [nasa.gov], didn't they teach you this in 5th grade? (Ha, wasn't searching for a NASA link, funny that it's the first result.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]