In the 2015 sci-fi film “The Martian,” Matt Damon stars as an astronaut who survives on a diet of potatoes grown on human feces while marooned on the Red Planet.
Now, a New York company that makes carbon-negative jet fuel is taking the interplanetary cuisine menu in a very different direction. His innovation has put him in the final of a NASA-sponsored contest to encourage the development of next-generation technologies to meet the dietary needs of astronauts.
The closely held Air Company of Brooklyn has pioneered a way to recycle carbon dioxide exhaled by in-flight astronauts to grow yeast-based nutrients for protein shakes designed to nourish crews on long-duration missions in deep space.
“It’s definitely more nutritious than Tang,” said the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Stafford Sheehan, referring to the powdered drink popularized in 1962 by John Glenn when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Sheehan, who has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale University, said he originally developed his carbon conversion technology as a means of producing high-purity alcohols for jet fuel, perfumes and vodka.
The NASA-sponsored Deep Space Food Challenge led Sheehan to modify his invention as a way to produce edible proteins, carbohydrates, and fats from the same system.
TASTE LIKE… SEITAN
The resulting single cell protein drink entered in the NASA contest has the consistency of a whey protein shake, Sheehan said. Sheehan likened its taste to that of seitan, a tofu-like food made from wheat gluten that originated in East Asian cuisine and has been embraced by vegetarians as a meat substitute.
“And you get that sweet, almost malty flavor,” Sheehan said in an interview.
Aside from protein drinks, the same process can be used to create more carbohydrate-rich substitutes for breads, pastas, and tortillas. For the sake of culinary variety, Sheehan said he sees his smoothie being supplemented on missions with other sustainably produced foods.
The company’s patented AIRMADE technology was one of eight winners announced by NASA this month in the second phase of its food competition, along with $750,000 in prizes. A final round of competition is coming up.
Other winners included: a bioregenerative system from a Florida lab to grow fresh vegetables, mushrooms and even insect larvae to use as micronutrients; an artificial photosynthesis process developed in California to create plant and fungus-based ingredients; and a gas fermentation technology from Finland to produce single cell proteins.
Up to US$1.5 million in prizes will be awarded to the eventual winners of the contest.
While few if any are likely to earn a place in the Michelin Guide for fine dining, they represent a huge leap forward for Tang and the freeze-dried snacks eaten by astronauts in the early days of space travel.
The new food-growing schemes are also more palatable and promise to be far more nutritious than Matt Damon’s fictional poo-fertilized potatoes in “The Martian.”
“That was taking an idea to the extreme for a Hollywood movie,” said Ralph Fritsche, space crop production manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, adding that human waste alone “is not the source full of nutrients that plants need to grow and thrive. .”
Keeping astronauts well-fed for extended periods within the limited zero-gravity confines of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit has long been a challenge for NASA. For the past two decades, crews aboard the International Space Station have lived on a diet of mostly packaged meals with some fresh produce delivered on regular resupply missions.
ISS crews have also experimented with growing a number of vegetables in orbit, including lettuce, cabbage, kale and chili peppers, according to NASA.
But the imperative for self-contained, low-waste food production that requires minimal resources has become more pronounced as NASA sets its sights on returning astronauts to the moon and eventual human exploration of Mars and beyond.
Advances in food production in space also have direct applications for feeding Earth’s ever-growing population in an era when climate change makes food scarcer and more difficult to produce, Fritsche said.
“Controlled environment agriculture, the first modules we implemented on the moon, will have some similarity to the vertical farms we will have here on Earth,” Fritsche said.
Sheehan’s system begins by taking carbon dioxide gas extracted from the air astronauts breathe and mixing it with hydrogen gas extracted from water by electrolysis. The resulting mixture of alcohol and water is then fed to a small amount of yeast to produce a renewable supply of single cell proteins and other nutrients.
In essence, Sheehan said, carbon dioxide and hydrogen form an alcohol feedstock for yeast, “and yeast is food for humans.”
“We’re not reinventing products,” Sheehan said, “we’re just making them in a more sustainable way.”
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Edited by Will Dunham