Processing Human Waste into Food for Space Travel

Space travel has the competing challenges of food generation as well as waste disposal. You have to bring enough food to keep people alive during the journey, and also have to manage the waste that everyone ends up producing.

A recent study from Penn State outlines some novel techniques to grow a bacterial crop using human waste as a feedstock, while at the same time preventing other pathogens from developing.

Because pathogens are also a concern with growing microbes in an enclosed, humid space, the team studied ways to grow microbes in either an alkaline environment or a high-heat environment. They raised the system's pH to 11 and were surprised to find a strain of the bacteria Halomonas desiderata that could thrive. The team found this bacteria to be 15 percent protein and 7 percent fats. At 158 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills most pathogens, they grew the edible Thermus aquaticus, which consisted of 61 percent protein and 16 percent fats.

Most of the news articles on this study give the impression that people will actually be eating their own waste, but in the most direct case they would be eating the bacteria grown from said waste. Alternatively, this could be used as a food source for yet another intermediary.

Interesting implications here. The fundamental takeaway is that space travel is very difficult. We have a hard enough time surviving on Spaceship Earth. Shrinking that down to a ship the size of a spec by comparison, and then moving between the stars? We are going to have to get very inventive here.

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