I'm deeply fascinated with the food supply/chain in longterm Space Travel and colonization. Lettuce is low hanging fruit, I hope that we see a vast amount of innovation in this space that allows for greater (ideally autonomous) modular growing spaces. This is a critical component to having a permanent settlement on Mars, having to rely on re-supply missions from Earth (Starship will drop the cost significantly) is untenable when you start scaling the population beyond an outpost.
If you're interested check out the talks from Mars Society convention(s) here:
Pretty cool, the developments of getting edible protein from atmospheric elements sounds really rad, especially if they're targeting using renewables.
Personally, I think for terrestrial use it will have limited applications as Ag can deliver plant proteins with great efficiency, animal less so, but if given a choice over a soylent-green type slury or an egg piece or grilled chicken I think I'd opt for the egg/chicken every time. My diet is already optimized at a 7:1 plant to animal protein ratio, I don't think I can go any higher on the plant side without compromising my strength training as I need lots of HDL fat to recover.
However, I wonder how this tech would work on the way to Mars and once there since there aren't any external sources to derive them from? Martian atmosphere is ~3% N, as opposed to ~78% on Earth. I understand they want to create a closed-loop system with re-utilization, but I wonder if they will need to develop some sort of tech to efficiently extract the N from urea when re-processing the water and then use it that way. That';s my best guess, because its about ~6 months to Mars and there is no way a payload with Humans, equipment, supplies, water can sustain them for that long.
Either way, I bookmarked there site and will periodically check it out, thanks!
yes :) “Flight and ground tissue showed differences in Fe, K, Na, P, S, and Zn content and total phenolic levels, but no differences in anthocyanin and ORAC levels. This study indicated that leafy vegetable crops can produce safe, edible, fresh food to supplement to the astronauts’ diet, and provide baseline data for continual operation of the Veggie plant growth units on ISS.”
Then I came across this NYTimes piece, which says, "In 2015, the astronauts wiped the leaves with sanitizing wipes before eating them."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/science/space-lettuce-ast...
So it sounds like there's definitely lots of future work still to be done.