15-06-2005 03:08									#1
	France to export its gourmet cuisine to Mars Got spare money?

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From ESA:

(The linked version is easier to read)

quote: 3 June 2005 'Martian bread and green tomato jam', 'Spirulina gnocchis' and 'Potato and tomato mille-feuilles' are three delicious recipes that two French companies have created for ESA and future space explorers to Mars and other planets. The challenge for the chefs was to offer astronauts well-flavoured food, made with only a few ingredients that could be grown on Mars. The result was 11 tasty recipes that could be used on future ESA long-duration space missions. ADF – Alain Ducasse Formation and GEM are the two French companies that produced the recipes, and their mutual experience in creating new products and ‘haute cuisine’ have led to excellent results. Chefs creating space food The menus were all based on nine main ingredients that ESA envisions could be grown in greenhouses of future colonies on Mars or other planets. The nine must comprise at least 40% of the final diet, while the remaining (up to) 60% could be additional vegetables, herbs, oil, butter, salt, pepper, sugar and other seasoning brought from Earth. "We are aiming initially at producing 40% locally for astronauts' food on future long-duration space missions, for example to Mars," says Christophe Lasseur, ESA's biological life-support coordinator responsible for recycling and production of air, water and food for long-term space missions. Potato and tomato mille-feuilles "Why 40%? By growing enough plants to cover around 40% of what we eat, we also get 'for free' the oxygen and water needed to live", explains Lasseur. The nine basic ingredients that Lasseur plans to grow on other planets are: rice, onions, tomatoes, soya, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, wheat and spirulina – all common ingredients except the last. Spirulina is a blue-green algae, a very rich source of nutrition with lots of protein (65% by weight), calcium, carbohydrates, lipids and various vitamins that cover essential nutritional needs for energy in extreme environments. Scott Horowitz opens a can of food Astronauts share a meal Today all the food for astronauts in space is brought from Earth, but this will not be possible for longer missions. Although still on the drawing board, ESA has already started research to see what could be grown on other planets - and what a self-supporting eco-system might look like on Mars. "In addition to being healthy and sufficiently nutritious for survival, good food could potentially provide psychological support for the crew, away from Earth for years," emphasises Lasseur. Martian bread and green tomato jam ADF chef Armand Arnal, adds: "The main challenge was to create a wide panel of recipes, distinct and full-flavoured, with only nine basic products." "Moreover, we had absolute restrictions on using salt, but were allowed to add a bit of sugar and fat, ingredients normally essential to the elaboration of a dish and to highlight its flavours."

I'd be actually fairly curious to taste some of this

	15-06-2005 04:09									#2
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Since when is gnocchi French cuisine?!

	15-06-2005 14:46									#3
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Let's hope the Martians don't complain about cultural imperialism then.

	15-06-2005 14:56									#4
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missions to mars ...eco systems on mars ...mars ...

	15-06-2005 14:59									#5
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oh yeah imagine that... when man meets aliens in Mars the first time.. our reps are french. I'd rather try my chances pushing Russian nukes on to my house and bet they won't work. That's how dangerous idea that would be. Aliens would never come to us again, or they would simply kill us all.

	15-06-2005 15:07									#6
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If we meet aliens and we give them frogs, snails, mussels and other vermin to eat, we'll get blasted with a huge antimatter ball in no time. Except if the Enterprise is near and saves us one more time, that is.

	15-06-2005 15:23									#7
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Looks tasty doesn't it?

Personally I prefer french fries.

	15-06-2005 15:25									#8
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i prefer fried french

	19-06-2005 06:44									#9
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This is interesting stuff. About 5 years ago, Elon Musk, a South African who went to college in the States and has stayed here and made his fortune, wanted to put an automated greenhouse on Mars. In the greenhouse, he wanted to grow a lot of the ingredients mentioned in the article above.

Unfortunately, even though he could put together the greenhouse for $15 million or so, the launch would cost $80 million. So he decided to start his own rocket launch firm -- SpaceX -- to drive down the price of launch by a factor of 10. His first launch is in August and he's already secured over $100 million in launch business.

After that, if his launch is successful and he's able to put bigger rockets into production, he'll probably do his Mars greenhouse project. Maybe we'll get to use some of those recipes.

Last edited by DanS on 19-06-2005 at 06:49

	19-06-2005 07:38									#10
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French food won't work on Mars, too many heavy sauces.

	19-06-2005 13:05									#11
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quote: Originally posted by DanS After that, if his launch is successful and he's able to put bigger rockets into production, he'll probably do his Mars greenhouse project. Maybe we'll get to use some of those recipes.

Actually, they're here for the "mission to Mars" Bushian project, which will have European cooperation (the European exploration programme, Aurora, will contribute to a manned mission to Mars, and is a main partner for the extra-Sol exploration projects)

	19-06-2005 20:48									#12
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Personally, I think the private-sector efforts will be the first to get human beings to Mars and will be the first to colonize the planet.

It's a paradox, but getting to Mars is too big of an undertaking for the government. It is too expensive of an undertaking to do the way the government is doing it. The private sector will do it on about 1/50th the cost, which is well within the range of the US philanthropic community.

	19-06-2005 21:03									#13
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1/50? aren't you slightly pushing it?

	19-06-2005 21:11									#14
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No. If Musk is successful, in the span of about 6 years, he will have reduced the cost to launch objects into space by 1/10th (well, 1/10th of the cost for American and Western European launchers). Further reductions are quite possible over the subsequent 20 years as the R&D to get to this cost reduction is ammortized against annual launches.

As it costs less to launch objects into orbit/earth escape, miniaturization ($$$) need not be so extreme. Off the shelf items can be used instead.

Bigelow Aerospace is constructing space stations that I guess are about 1/100th the cost of the International Space Station by volume. These could be repurposed for exploration.

Last edited by DanS on 19-06-2005 at 21:23