Future of Engineering

Just as European settlers brought seeds to grow crops in America, humankind will one day take crops to the moon, Mars and beyond. So believes Gene Giacomelli, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, and director of the UA's Controlled Environment Agriculture Program. Reading this here got me interested enough to read a bit further.

Giacomelli emphasizes that technology will create efficient crop production in an environment where nature largely discourages growth. While growing controlled-environment crops is costlier and uses 10 to 100 times more energy than conventional production methods, ultimately it is a priceless consideration for future space explorations, according to him.

While it sounds rather fascinating, I'm wondering whether this is something that can happen (if at all) only far too much into the future. We haven't even had humans go remotely near any planet (other than our own that is) even for brief exploration. In such a scenario, doesn't it sound implausible that we will need to grow crops on Mars in our generation or the next for sustaining ourselves? Quizzical, I ventured to search for any other mention of such extra-planetary farming and food ideas.

I did not have to look for long, before I came across the following tidbit:

"Japanese researchers have proposed a diet that provides the maximum nutrition for the smallest amount of resources for astronauts living for extended periods on Mars. The problem? The smell. Of the seven 'wonder' foods suggested, Azolla or mosquito fern is incredibly nutritious but the smell, the researchers noted, "might cause a problem of acceptance as food material."..."

A bit more of focussed searching and I came across an article that made me realise that folks are really serious about colonizing Mars and doing something with the planet...In this paper, "the economic viability of colonizing Mars is examined. It is shown, that of all bodies in the solar system other than Earth, Mars is unique in that it has the resources required to support a population of sufficient size to create locally a new branch of human civilization. It is also shown that while Mars may lack any cash material directly exportable to Earth, Mars' orbital elements and other physical parameters gives a unique positional advantage that will allow it to act as a keystone supporting extractive activities in the asteroid belt and elsewhere in the solar system." Serious, isn't he? This appears to have been written over ten years back, so not sure if Mr. Zubrin is still as optimistic.

And finally, there was this page from The Caves of Mars that was again focussed on the types of crops that are ideally suited for Mars. "Bioregenerative life support on Mars will require more than your 'garden variety' crops. Some the features we should be looking for is rapid growth, low light requirements, wide pH range and high nutrition with minimal wastes. And the simpler the required infrastructure, the better." The crops suggested by the Caves of Mars? Duckweed, (Lemna minor) and Water Fern, (Azolla filiculoides).

I'd have thought there would be more, but I was not able to gather much more information from the web - surprising, I admit. I am going to keep an eye out on this topic, never knew there were people around the world who could be interested in figuring how folks would eat on Mars. I'd have thought they should have been more interested in finding out what could eat off humans in Mars, but then that's why I'm called a pessimist in a writer's clothing.

Labels: Agricultural-Engineering, Bio-engineering