[api]

This reminds me of US research that was done during the Cold War about surviving a nuclear winter by producing food products directly from petroleum. It's theoretically possible and you could survive on it as a supplemental source of calories.

I think optimizing farming for space flight is probably better, especially if you have always-on solar power (as you do anywhere near the sun) or nuclear power. Hydrocarbons from asteroids and comets are probably better suited for things like plastics manufacture and petrochemicals, since you would not have biotic oil sources in space.

[gibspaulding]

Apparently producing margarine from coal was actually done during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine?wprov=sfti1#Coal_but...

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/brave-new-bu...

Edit: The more I read on this the more doubtful I’m becoming that this was actually produced at scale. If anyone has a better source I’d love to see it!

[dialup_sounds]

I can't decide if this sounds more like a startup idea or a proposal from the coal lobby.

[miffy900]

No it couldn't have been, from wikipedia:

> The process required at least 60 kilograms of coal per kilogram of synthetic butter.[23] That industrial process was discontinued after WWII due to its inefficiency.

[dylan604]

I was never a fan of margarine, but the more I learn tidbits like this the more I think it strange.

[vegetablepotpie]

I’m really curious about this. I did find one 2022 article about producing edible fats from petroleum [1].

It does cite two articles from the ‘60s one about building acids from petroleum, and building long chains of fat from biological sources. I’ve found that people may have been thinking about it at the height of the Cold War. Do you have any links you could point me to?

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02638...

[pfdietz]

The British company ICI had a product called Pruteen, which was made by growing bacteria on methanol produced from natural gas as the energy source. It was intended as cattle feed; if people ate it there would be an excess of purines which could lead to gout.

Pruteen was followed by the more successful product Quorn, which is made from a fungus grown in fermentation tanks with glucose as the energy source. It is intended for human consumption as a meat substitute.

[Symmetry]

ALLFED[1] is an organization doing research into how we could keep most everyone alive if we have a decade of winder after a super volcano, asteroid impact, or nuclear winter. Processes that convert hydrocarbons into calories are certainly in their playbook.

[1]https://allfed.info/

[jvanderbot]

I can't think of a single reason we wouldn't just eat algae sludge or synthetic protein mash or something else. Farming is not a space- or weight- optimized process.

[szvsw]

To be fair, people will still be people… if the sludge/protein mash can be mildly upgraded to diversity/quality comparable to MREs (not that I’ve ever had one) sure, but for long term space flight it seems plausible that the psychological/morale detriments of eating sludge every day (or any single meal for that matter) would be significant.

[stoneman24]

Isn’t there a requirement for lots of fibre in the diet as well as vitamins, protein, carbohydrates and fats. As well as the psychological effect of eating good food and not mush.

[whycome]

Soluble fiber is broken down partially in the gut by bacteria/fermentation. Lots remains. Insoluble fiber passes through mostly unchanged.

You see where this is going.

You need only minimal new inputs and the rest can be recycled.

[stoneman24]

To extend D Rumsfeld

there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

And now things that we know and wish that we didn’t (ie spaceship recycling)

[whycome]

Pee is largely recycled right now on the ISS. It's mostly water.

And nitrogen is good for growing plants - the cellulose of their structure is the ideal insoluble fibre for us. Though, cows turn it into usable sugars.

[api]

I heard someone call the ISS closed water system the infinite coffee machine. Yesterday’s coffee becomes today’s coffee.

It sounds gross but if we get good enough at it it’ll work.

Like any settlement on a frontier the first people in space aren’t going to eat well. They’ll survive. After a long time I imagine we will get good at growing and manufacturing food up there. It’s honestly not even close to the hardest problem. Full recycling and modular manufacturing for complex items is a lot harder.

[debacle]

If I'm in a fragile metal bubble in the deep black vastness of space, the texture of my nutrisludge will be the least existential of my worries.

[pixl97]

If Rimworld (the game) is to be believed, people that eat too much nutrisludge will eventually snap and eat the people around them.

[themaninthedark]

And then turn them into hats....don't forget the hats.

[ceejayoz]

> If I'm in a fragile metal bubble in the deep black vastness of space...

... maintaining your mental health is probably a significant concern, which may indeed be surprisingly impacted by the texture of your nutrisludge.