NASA wants to turn astronaut poop into astronaut food

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(clicky)NASA wants to turn astronaut poop into astronaut food
NEW YORK: The US space agency has funded researchers to find out how to recycle human excreta into food that can help astronauts sustain on deeper space missions, including Mars.
hmmmmmm.... I dunno.... could any of you eat this kind of real-life soylent green [brown]?

One creature's poo is another's feast. If you've ever eaten button mushrooms you're eating a fungus that gets it's food from cow poo, and many plants also use animal poo as a significant source of their nutrient uptake. Recycling is nothing new, it's been around since the beginning of life. Understanding that I would have no problems with it, assuming it's cleaned of all harmful bacteria and doesn't taste like it was just expelled.

edit: spelling error.

I knew that soylent green would eventually happen but I never imagined it would involve using the waste of living things.

That's nature though, seriously. At some point down the line whatever you're eating either ate the poo of another animal or ate the animal that was eating the poo. It all gets recycled. After actually reading the article, what they're doing is recycling those nutrients by using plant matter. So they may get a green brick of algae to eat that came from human waste, but it would actually be considered a type of vegetable, probably tasting like seaweed. In my opinion they should look into mushrooms for that process though, fungus is actually much more efficient at decomposing waste matter than plants.

I guess the gross thing in most human minds, would be the direct conversion of human waste extrusions into food, rather than going through leavening intermediary steps as you mentioned.

^^^
piss isn't as awful, IMHO. I'd like to see them do that with dookie.

All fruits and vegetables grown before the 20th century were fertilized with manure (including 'nightsoil'-ie human manure). Organic produce still is.

But the button mushrooms don't eat their OWN waste. And neither do organically grown fruits and vegetables. If you were meant to eat your own S then why is it excreted instead of retained in your body?

Growing mushrooms from human waste in a space station for human astronauts to eat is one thing. But astronauts directly eating their own waste is another concept altogether.

the first time I'd heard of people using their own alimentary product to fertilize their gardens was when it was reported that is what Ted Kaczynski did. I have a yellow booklet at home which describes the many ways that recycling one's own urine is good for what ails one.

I guess you guys are not too unfamiliar with traditional agriculture and "nightsoil?"

People have been converting poop into edible crops for millenia. No reason they shouldn't continue just because they are floating in tin cans, high above the world.

Sodium nitrate is allowed in the production of USDA Organic crops, as are synthetic micronutrients and amino acids used as soil amendments. Not to mention various mined minerals, "fish products", etc.



Button mushrooms, and many of their close relatives, are grown in manure that has been kiln dried and is biologically sterile before it is inoculated with fungal spores. Some others are grown in other media, like hardwood sawdust.

I recall microgravity growing experiments as far back as the early 80's, often lettuces and other small greens.

I don't see any reason why they couldn't process human excretia into fertilizer for plants.

would you feel totally comfortable eating it?

All natural, organic inks in that cover, eh?

But seriously, I don't think the proposal is to serve the astronauts s**t sandwiches. They are studying ways to recycle human waste, many of these result in useful chemicals for other manufacturing processes, some will be fertilizer for food grown in space.

A better look at this, and an indication that this is hardly news:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... _wastenot/

all those other non-direct-to-food apps are non-controversial. it is just the final bit, turning the stuff directly into food to be eaten directly, that is a bit queasy-making. it is just a bit less than the yuck factor of drinking urine.

Mycology used to be one of my special interests. I've grown a whole slew of different fungus,[joke] and not just on my feet[/joke].
Most mushroom growers don't actually use poo in modern production, they've moved onto coco coir as a primary substrate-- it's easier to get, less contamination prone, and makes people feel more comfortable than eating a food grown on cow poo. The coir is a poor alternative though, it births about half as much fruit as cow poo and the taste is very bland compared to poo grown.

I take back one of my previous statements, NASA should continue on the plant line of nutrient recycling. Growing mushrooms can be exceptionally difficult for novices, which astronauts would most likely be. Their food source is the same as mold (another fungus), and hundreds of different types of toxic bacteria. To start a mushroom spawning run you have to have a completely sterile environment to make sure bacteria doesn't colonize the substrate before the fungus can take hold-- I made sure my work area was as clean as a lab environment and still got about 2% contamination rate on my spawn runs. Also, it's almost impossible to harvest a batch of mushrooms without any of them popping their veil and dropping spores, which I think would be pretty detrimental to a space operation. They also off gas CO2, so you'd need more carbon scrubbing which equals more electricity. That being said they are more efficient at waste consumption than plants.

Also of note organic isn't really standardized. The FDA has recommendations on it, but they don't have strict requirements. I'd trust hydroponics more than organic, most synthetic chemicals clog up hydroponic systems, so most hydroponic growers don't use them due to the increased headache and cost. Sure the chemicals are mined, but they're mostly pure and the impurities are generally other chemicals that are beneficial to plants-- an example being calcium nitrate, generally used for the nitrogen the impurity is calcium but that's also a macro nutrient for plants. I grow hydroponically now and I'll never go back to soil, my hydro fruits taste better, yield more, and conserve more water than anything I've done in soil.

Sorry for the wall of text, but special interests demand what special interests want-- to be heard...

Am I the only one here who thinks that sounds horrible? I'd rather starve. I'll be able to survive during a food crisis just by living off my stored body fat while the skinny ninnies all waste away.