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Future Astronauts May Survive On Eating Silkworms
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jan 14, 2009 11:00 AM
from the still-better-than-tang dept.
from the still-better-than-tang dept.
sciencehabit writes "Science reports that silkworms may be an ideal food source for future space missions. They breed quickly, require little space and water, and generate smaller amounts of excrement than poultry or fish. They also contain twice as many essential amino acids as pork does and four times as much as eggs and milk. Even the insect's inedible silk, which makes up 50% of the weight of the dry cocoon, could provide nutrients: The material can be rendered edible through chemical processing and can be mixed with fruit juice, sugar, and food coloring to produce jam."
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Food for thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we just have to solve this space radiation issue and how to shield astronauts from it.
Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Insightful)
In space, yes. Outside the earth's magnetosphere, no. Even out on the moon, the magnetosphere still protects them from much of the nastiness (solar wind, cosmic rays, etc.), but if we're gonna go to Mars or wherever, we'll need to bring our own protection.
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Re:Food for thought (Score:4, Funny)
but if we're gonna go to Mars or wherever, we'll need to bring our own protection.
Wait are you talking about the radiation or is this still the space sex thread?
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
Hey if that works, they've got the solution to space travel all wrapped up!
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes sense since most of the blood in your body flows to your head when you're in Zero-G.
Sorry to burst all of your geeky dreams.
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
Male Astronauts have apparently tried quite a bit
Unless you have a citation for this I'm going to assume that you are confusing the NASA channel with old Cinemax reruns of Emmanuelle in Space ;)
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
From what I understand, it's almost impossible for people to have sex in Zero-G. Male Astronauts have apparently tried quite a bit, even with the help of drugs, but they -can't- get an erection. This makes sense since most of the blood in your body flows to your head when you're in Zero-G.
So NASA just needs to screen astronaut applicants for the ability to mastrubate while standing on their head...
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
Female astronauts have no problem, they have blood in their head during normal sex too.
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
especially pushers and shovers.
The problems of docking
and then interlocking
are greatly increased when one hovers.
Source: Omni Magazine, limerick contest
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Re:Food for thought (Score:4, Interesting)
The ocean is connected to the land as far as ecosystems go. A single asteroid can kill off both land and oceanic populations.
On the other hand if you had viable terrestrial and space populations then a single asteroid would have a much more difficult go at it.
And it isn't just asteroids that we have to worry about. It isn't a matter of if the surface of this planet will become uninhabitable to humans it is a more a matter of when.
Space Colonization is a matter of survival of the species and other species as well. Also we may just learn something along the way.
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Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, man. That's deep!
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Re:Food for thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Just in case you were unaware, Kangaroo is relatively commonly eaten in the great southern land of Oz. It's considered a generally "low quality" meat though, and is also used as pet food. Although, you can get kangaroo steaks and burgers intended for human consumption in most supermarkets or on the menus of some eateries, especially at tourist locations.
Koalas on the other hand are legally protected.
As a note, Australia is the only country in the world that eats both the animals displayed on its coat of arms (Kangaroo and Emu). I'm not sure the British could, even if they wanted, since they have a Lion and a Unicorn, and most Americans would probably be a little averse to the idea of Eagle for dinner.
I think the silkworms probably do make more sense than trying to get a bunch of roos on a space vessel (I'm loving the imagery of that though)
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gross (Score:5, Funny)
can we make them taste like bacon?
Re:gross (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:gross (Score:5, Informative)
They taste kind of like a very musty bean, but they have the typical cooked larva mouthfeel to them, a slightly taught exterior that 'pops' when you bite into them, and a soft creamy interior.
I'm not just talking shit either. Silk worms are a very common street vendor food in Korea, and I tried some the last time I was there. I'd seen them for decades, but I'd chickened out when I saw them in my earlier years.
If I was in some sort of survival environment, like the harsh vacuum of space, I wouldn't mind eating silk worms, but on a regular basis, I'm not too fond of them.
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Re:gross (Score:5, Interesting)
How are they served in Korea? Sounds like you ate them whole... cooked or raw? Can you get them fried? (yes I'm from the south). If they taste like beans can you grind them up into a hummus or bean dip? Refried worms, mmmm.
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Re:gross (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:gross (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:gross (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:gross (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:gross (Score:5, Insightful)
People around the world eat some strange shit. Snails, dog, pork guts (chitterlings), carob-coated insects, fish eggs, and probably some nasty shit I've never heard of. Some of this stuff might be considered a delicacy tody, but I am sure it all started due to hunger.
Have you ever looked at a cow? What made some poor bastard decide to milk that huge, stinking thing? Yep. Hunger!
I watched a documentary a few years back that showed a guy driving a stick into the side of a cow. A stream of blood mixed with something else poured out of the animal and was collected and ...gagh... drunk.
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Re:gross (Score:5, Funny)
Who was the guy who first looked at a chicken and thought "I'm gonna eat the first thing that comes out of that bird's butt."
Thank god the egg came out first.
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Re:gross (Score:5, Interesting)
Cut urchin in half with kitchen shears while enjoying the spines moving about in your hand. Add a dash of soy sauce. Eat with spoon. Repeat.
I think you just made PETA's hit list for that comment.
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Re:gross (Score:5, Funny)
Last time I was there I had some great meat balls. They really were the dog's bollocks.
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Re:silkworms in a can (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:gross (Score:5, Informative)
can we make them taste like bacon?
Yes... just wrap them in bacon...
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Re:gross (Score:4, Funny)
PIGS!
IN!
SPAAAaaaAAAaaaAAAaaaACE!
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If they taste like they smell...... (Score:5, Funny)
so what do they taste like?? can we make them taste like bacon?
Last year I was in Korea where the streets are lined with vendors frying up silkworm pupae on the street as an, *ahem*, delicacy. The smell wafting down the road can only be described as a cross between death and pus. I would eat my fellow astronauts over silkworms.
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Re:gross (Score:5, Funny)
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Cutlery! (Score:4, Informative)
If you can find a way to properly polymerise their silk, you could even make plastic knives and forks (or better, a spork) out of their silk to eat them with.
Breed larger silkworks and you could even use them to make the plates to eat them from! BONUS!
Re:Cutlery! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah the Spork. With spokes to short to grab anything, however their unique shape prevents it from pickup liquid well either.
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Spnife (Score:5, Funny)
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The death of a myth (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The death of a myth (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't help that the previous generation had Apollo 11 and that "one small step" thing as a huge success. Then they had Apollo 13 and "Houston we've had a problem" that while missing the moon turned into a huge survival story success. My generation has had the Challenger and Columbia *kaboom* everyone dead stories. Now...building the Mir space station was a big story when I was a little kid. I remember our science teacher had us save our little milk carton things from lunch until we could build a huge one to hang up. Of course that one ended in a publicity stunt with Taco Bell promising free tacos if Mir hit some giant floating target in the ocean.
The previous generation got all the really cool and amazing space stories. My generation has gotten a few monumental failures, some publicity stunts, and space robots (which are pretty cool, but not a whole lot of that man to the moon excitement stuff).
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Hey (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh, I don't know, Frank, how about... MORE FU(#1NG WORMS!?"
"Just calm down and pass the worm jam."
oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, great timing! (Score:4, Interesting)
Now Hershey's can spin this nasty incident [consumerist.com] as test marketing of their new Space Brownies!
~Philly
Asians eat these already (Score:4, Informative)
Seen 'em all over the place in Korea from street carts. They always have this particular insect trifecta: Silk Worms, Crickets, and freshwater Snails:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beondegi [wikipedia.org]
Food Coloring? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do we really need to waste precious cargo space and weight to bring up food coloring? I suppose astronauts might want green or purple catchup too.
Want to see someone trying it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Benchilada eats silkworm pupae [youtube.com] live on video, So You Don't Have To [youtube.com]. (not mentioned in the video is the fact that his friend, helping him, started throwing up convulsively soon after they finished filming the episode.)
Must be in the NASA manual... (Score:5, Funny)
Astronaut 2,"Paragraph 47, subsection 19, cause 9a. You can find it in the index under S.U.A.E.I."
Astronaut 1,"S.U.A.E.I.?"
Astronaut 2,"Shut up and eat it."
Apologies to Babylon 5.
The mass still has to come from somewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The mass still has to come from somewhere (Score:5, Informative)
1) The article states that Silkworms seem to be the most compact form of Human-edible food. 1kg of Silkworm Meat will give you far more nutrients and proteins than 1kg of Chicken meat.
2) For a long-term space mission, (we're talking at -least- decades from now) you would need a renewable food source that ultimately converts solar energy into consumable chemical energy, since Humans can't eat sunlight. So futuristic Arcology-like spaceships might have greenhouses to harness solar energy, and astronauts could eat grown food. However, even Vegans need vitamin supplements and the article states that for protein and nutrient purposes, Silkworms make a great compact, efficient, renewable food source.
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Re:The mass still has to come from somewhere (Score:4, Insightful)
Citation needed. An unbalanced diet can require supplements, but a vegan diet can be balanced, at least according to the NIH, although it's harder than a non-vegan diet.
Citation: In space, there is a bit less biodiversity than on Earth. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that it might be a bit difficult for astronauts to maintain a balanced diet if vegans here on Earth are having trouble doing so.
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Re:The mass still has to come from somewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
So why not just bring human-edible food instead of silk worm food?
"Human-edible food" is like this simple loop that most people here should understand:
---> for (int x=100; x--; x>0)
After the function ends, the astronaunts die. I think I've read that astronauts "consume" 10kg of materials (air,water,food) per day so that it would cost 300kg to support somebody for a month if nothing ever got recycled. What space colonists need is a simple food-chain like this:
----> while (1) { plants(Sun, Fertiziler); silkworm(Plants); humans(Silkworm); }
In this way, you can recycle the processed waste from the silkworm and the humans (i.e. the "Fertilizer") and combine that with available Sunlight to generate a continuous cycle of food. And when "not dying" is the goal, it really won't matter how it tastes.
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or go vegetarian? (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that it costs more to raise an animal on vegetable feed than you gain by eating it, why not just eat the food that they're feeding the silkworms ?
China is all set for their space program then! (Score:4, Funny)
This should be great for their fledgling space program and will prove they're committed to a peaceful future. They have vast quantities of old Silkworms [wikipedia.org] laying around ready to be made into food. Gives a whole new meaning to the term explosive diarrhea though.
"Make dinner, not war" is what I always say.
Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (Score:5, Informative)
I guess Chris Moriarty's novel "Spin Control", where a good deal of the biomass for a long-term space mission was silkworms, was ahead of the curve.
Re:Potato Chips on a Sub (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're not getting, is that they're concerned with finding a food source that can be replicated while en route to Mars. Say the Mars crew was 5 people strong. 3 years is 1095 days. For 5 people to eat 3 square meals a day, that's 5475 servings of food. Scratch that, not servings, but complete meals, which generally represent at least a couple servings of various food groups. The concern is that A.)You're packing a ton of extra weight that has to break Earth's gravity, and then adding in additional fuel to compensate, which then makes the craft even heavier. B.) That much food, even in compact forms like tuna cans and beef jerky, is still going to take a massive area just for storage. Again, extra weight added to craft for additional spacecraft real estate. C.)Survivability. Most of the foods you listed will not keep at room temperature for 3 years. Tuna, perhaps, but jerky, bagels, etc. Won't make it even close to that. You can freeze it, but this will also require extra gear, energy and materials to accomplish.
Now, if you were to introduce a renewable food source like the silk worm, most of those problems are reduced considerably. You leave orbit with only a seed population, and since their bodies, much like ours, are comprised mostly of water, it is not a straight equation of 1LB of worm food begets 1LB of worms. They eat leaves, which could theoretically also be grown using a minimum of resources, which only require light (free), water (recyclable) and soil (recyclable). Therefore you are netting a gain in food that is more than what you leave with from Earth.
I'm sure they will probably pack some regular food too, but likely more as an appeasement to keep the astronauts sane. It will be spaced out sparingly over a long ride, and is essentially a luxury. I view it a lot like the food situation in Firefly, where most of their diet is comprised from nondescript protein bars. If you didn't see the behind the scenes of them making those protein bars, I think you'd be looking at a very similar set of circumstances. Once the worms have been harvested, they can be processed any number of ways, including being refined and compacted into their most efficient form (bars). Then you add in a box of strawberries every now and then just to keep from going all bibbledy.
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