Space Travel and Synthetic Biology

We can't carry everything we need for long space missions. Could synthetic biology help us produce stuff like biopolymers, drugs or even food?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Peter, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
that looks at the future and says, don't want to argue.
I don't want a debate. I don't want to hear
about what kind of food you hate. I'm Jonathan Strickland,

(00:21):
I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren Big Obama
is not with us today. She's having a horrible dystopian
allergy experience. Yeah, we should do one about the future
of allergies. Actually, that's not a bad idea. I was
just going to kid about that, but that's actually a
pretty interesting topic. We'll put it on the list. Yeah,
and we'll make sure that she's, you know, got plenty

(00:42):
of any histamines in her system before we record that one,
but not so many that she's asleep, because there's no
point really. But today we wanted to talk about something
that is a pretty cool topic, the idea of one
of the big challenges in space travel. You knew it
was going to come to space travel because here and
Forward Thinking, space travel is one of those things we're

(01:03):
absolutely obsessed with, you know, so, But Joe, why don't
you pay me a picture with your words and tell
me what you think of as some of the biggest
challenges in space travel. Well, let's see. First of all,
i'd have to say space pirates. That's a big one, geck.
And I'd have to say the fact that space smells

(01:25):
really bad. In space, no one can smell you. Third, though,
I'd say there are tremendous costs to getting the stuff
we need in space up there. Yeah, you might be wondering, like, um,
why don't we have all of those Star Trek space
stations going all around the Earth and colonies on the

(01:47):
Moon and Mars. And there are several explanations, but one
of the most basic is just it's really expensive. Yeah,
it costs huge amounts of money to have a space launch.
And uh, you know we've talked about in the past before.
We've given kind of the round number, the one that
everybody quotes, which is ten dollars per pound. Right now,

(02:07):
it's more expensive than that really good cut of meat
that you can find at your grosser's. Um. Yeah, ten
thousand dollars a pound is a huge amount of money.
But the unicorn meat, I don't know, say, think geeks
sells unicorn meat for much less than that, but uh,
it comes in a can like spam, but ten thousand

(02:28):
dollars per pound. So we we thought for a moment,
we thought, well, why we should look into this, because
we have quoted this figure many many times ourselves. Right, well,
it's not necessarily wrong, but it's not a specific number either.
It's sort of a rough historical estimate, right, and and
beyond that, it's it's very vague because this is ten
thousand dollars to get stuff into space. But we're into space, right,

(02:50):
that's a good question. So basically, if you look back
in the history of us taking stuff from the surface
of the Earth up to orbit or beyond it, it's
been about ten tho dollars per pound on average, if
you if you average together the stuff that costs more
and the stuff that costs less. Well, what influences those.
One of those is the kind of rocket we use,

(03:12):
and we can talk about that in a second. But
of course another one is simply where you're taking this stuff.
So going to a low Earth orbit destination like the
International Space Station is going to be cheaper than say,
taking a satellite way out to geo stationary orbit where
it stays at the same line of longitude and revolves
around the Earth in synchronization. Right. And also it would

(03:34):
matter about whether or not the spacecraft you're sending up
is expected to come back, because then you know you
need to believe it has crew that's gonna be yeah,
because yeah, you want them eventually to come back, and
so you need to factor in the amount of field
that's going to be necessary to make the return trip.
And that's just talking about orbit. Of course. Now once
you're talking about going to another planet or to a moon,

(03:58):
then you add in a whole other lay of complexity
because then you're talking about landing vehicles and hopefully if
it's a crude mission you're talking about relaunching off of this,
I mean adding more and more layers of complexity and
more and more support requirements. Right. We can talk about
the support mass that's required on these missions in a bit,

(04:18):
But the other thing is what rocket you're using. So
on on the low end, so far, we have something
like SpaceX's Falcon nine, right, And I should add that
the figures I've seen, we're actually priced per kilogram, so
per unit of mass as opposed to per unit of weight,

(04:39):
and then I did the conversion to UH cost per
pound that way, Well, what is it, Jonathan, give us
the numbers. So for the Falcon nine the cost per
pound and and it was about a thousand, eight hundred
sixty seven dollars and seventy three cents, so significantly less
than ten thousand dollars per pound, but still well above uh,
you know what most of us be able to pay

(05:00):
to send a pound of stuff up into space. And
there's also the Atlas five, which would be closer to
the higher end. That's closer to about six thousand dollars
per pound. But all of this is rough estimation, and
it's mostly estimated based on the cost of a launch
compared to the cargo capacity of you know whatever device,

(05:22):
like how much mask can a rocket propel up into orbit?
So it's it's taking all that into consideration. It's almost
like looking at the pound for pound best fighter. You know,
you have to take all this stuff, and there are
a lot of factors that may not be entering into
this really rough estimation that could wildly change that amount, right. Well,

(05:42):
one of the things that could wildly change it, of course,
is creating much cheaper, newer versions in the future, which
people like Elon Musk have been predicting is going to
happen for a while now. The he said, you know,
Musk says, the private spaceflight industry is going to be
able to get prices much cheaper. The first major milestone
is going to be a launch cost of a thousand

(06:04):
dollars per pound. And Musk predicted in an interview with
NPR in two thousand eleven that the Falcon Heavy, which
is the booster rocket that's the successor to the Falcon nine.
They're working on it now. The Falcon Heavy is like
the Falcon nine, Like I think it's something like three
Falcon nine's grouped together. It's it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's it's enormous.
I know, it's big. I mean, we'll see if that

(06:27):
achieves a thousand dollars per pound. He predicted that a
couple of years ago, but we don't know yet. It's
scheduled for launch in so I guess we'll find out.
And of course, in the same NPR interview, must acknowledge
that even a thousand dollars per pound is still too expensive.
I mean, that's so expensive. What we really need to
do is get things under a hundred dollars per pound. Yeah,

(06:51):
and even then we still have some limitations to take
into right, because no matter how cheap you get it
in terms of the dollar or as you spend right,
you still have physical limitations. Exactly, you have a physical
limitation of how much cargo of particular rocket can boost
into orbit. And depending upon what your mission is, you

(07:11):
may not be able to physically take with you using
a single rocket at any rate the materials you need
to carry out your mission. Let's say that your mission
is to go to Mars and spend some time there
and come back now, because the way the Martian orbit
and the Earth orbit are, there's really a very limited
window of when you want to launch to Mars in

(07:33):
order to spend the least amount of fuel to get there.
And then once you're at Mars, you have to wait
for a long time for that situation to come back
round for you to be able to get back to
Earth under the same conditions. Otherwise you have to have
even more fuel because the distance between Earth and Mars
will be greater, right, because they don't orbit the son
at the same rate. Yeah, I mean, there's no point
at in launching at a time when you're not going

(07:54):
to be able to make the shortest route to Earth, right, Yeah,
you wouldn't want to launch off of ours and say, well,
here's the problem. By the time we get to Earth,
we it will effectively be on the other side of
the Sun from where we are now, So we're going
to need five times the amount of fuel we would
need or more. Really, I was just throwing five times
in there out of random, right. So they are basically

(08:16):
mass constraints on top of the dollar constraints. And one
of those is that in the paper we're going to
talk about in this episode points this out, so you'll
hear about that in a second. But they say for
every unit mass of payload launched into space, the mission
as a whole requires nine nine units of support. So

(08:36):
for every pound of payload the stuff you're taking, we
require nine pounds of food, water, oxygen, fuel. Yeah, and
it gets even more complicated, right because when you're talking
about fuel, like, you can't just add fuel into the
mixture and say, oh, now, adding fuel increases your weight,
so you need to add more fuel. You have to

(08:58):
find the right balance point where the fuel you have
is going to be sufficient to get that weight out
into space. It's kind of like, why doesn't my car
have a gallon gas tank? Yeah? Yeah, because by that
time that your car would be so heavy as to
not be able to move. Um, I mean yeah, you
never need to refill it because it would never consume
enough fuel. You never get anywhere your battery would diverse.

(09:22):
But then we look at things like permanent colonies, which
have their own issues. Right, even if you if you
figured out the amounts you need to get people to
where they're going. Let's say you know you're going to
establish a Martian colony. Obviously you can't expect to have
everything you ever will ever need on board that same rocket.
It's just not you know that spacecraft is not going

(09:44):
to have the cargo capacity necessary to carry a lifetime
supply of everything. Unless you're big cargo requirements are effectively infinity.
Then you can't do that, right if you if you're
going to be a cynical, cold hearted person and say, well,
technically there is lifetime supply on there, because after the
supply runs out, so well, the lifetime that's not what

(10:05):
we're talking about here. We're talking about being able to
perpetuate a colony. Be able to keep it going. So
clearly you can't just expect to be able to carry
everything with you, nor in the case of something like Mars,
can you expect to get regular resupplies from Earth. Because
it takes months for a ship to get from Earth

(10:26):
to Mars, and that's under ideal conditions. That's when we're
talking about Earth and Mars being lined up so that
you are spending the least amount of effort to get
out there. Then even then you're you're talking about uh,
like an eight month trip and then more than a
year before it comes round again. So that's not really
a viable option either to say like, oh, we'll just

(10:47):
send uh supplies from Earth to Mars indefinitely in order
to keep them going. So that's one of the reasons
why we talked about the big challenges that the Mars
one Colony faces if they want to really be successful.
So here's where we get to the point of the episode.
What if we could create a way where a low

(11:07):
mass initial investment in a space mission's cargo could create
a self replenishing system for the things we need in
order to colonize other planets or survive in a long
space journey, right, So, in other words, what if we
could bring something with us that could continue to manufacture

(11:28):
the basic things we're going to need, either on the
journey there or if it's a uh, if it's a
mission like the one we mentioned about Mars, where you
land on the planet, you are actually able to make
the stuff that you need in order for that mission
to be a success and for everyone to survive and
to get back to Earth safely. Yeah, and this is
where synthetic biology comes in. Yeah, this is really an

(11:49):
interesting idea. Synthetic biology is defined as the design and
construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, and the
redesign of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes. So
it's sort of like engineering with life. Yeah, it's saying,
look at these various organisms, usually micro organisms in the

(12:10):
case of synthetic biology. Look at these micro organisms that
have remarkable capabilities and qualities and can survive in various
environments and produce things that, with a little tinkering can
come become useful stuff for us. What if part of
our payload in that initial launch happens to be some
of these micro organisms that we put to use, especially

(12:33):
once we get to a place like Mars and can
we realistically create you know, the basic things we're gonna
need using those microorganisms converting the stuff that's already there. Yeah,
the idea here is going to space and taking along
a factory that fits in a Petrie dish. Yeah. But space,

(12:55):
of course, we should say at the outset is not
the only place that synthetic biology is going to be
a No, there's actually an m i T Synthetic Biology
working group. Have you actually looked at this website the websites,
it's it's kind of cute. It's a website that includes
areas of interest for the field. So the at m
I T. You have a working group that meets in
brainstorms about potential uses for synthetic biology and they dream

(13:18):
big and my favorite like they have areas like yeah
we expect well yeah, I mean you know why dreams small,
aim for the stars. If you don't make it, you're
still going to come up with something amazing with your bacteria. Yeah,
So that they're applications include things like fabrication, computation and

(13:39):
signal processing, materials processing, energy management, mechanics, and replication. But
it also creates creates some interesting more science fiction e
like applications that would have fit in with our our
x men uh episodes in a way, like the idea
of creating humans that can photos synthesize, so that humans

(14:01):
would be able to get some energy through a photosynthetic
chemical process similar to what you find in plants. Uh.
This was not It wasn't gone into detail. It was
like literally it was listed on the website, and I thought,
I want to read that paper to see if you're
actually paying attention. Maybe that could very well be the

(14:23):
point of it. But the idea is that this biology
would allow us to harness these processes that organisms carry out,
or we could change the organisms to do something that
we specifically need them to do, either genetically or through
selective breeding or whatever, um, and then use those to
our advantage. So really simple example that I was thinking
of is a genetic alteration to a silkworm so that

(14:46):
the silk produced is stronger and more resilient, so that
you could use that silk to then make other stuff
that would be useful for you. That's just a like
an example polled elephant air. Yeah, I feel like you've
talked about some other examples of this kind of thing
on the show before, like when we talked about microbial
computing and about creating microbial machines that would move tiny

(15:13):
components in machines that like you can get microbes to
spin a tiny gear. Uh. And if you would be
changing the nature of these microbial life forms in order
to do useful work for you, that seems like that
would fit under synthetic biology, right. Yeah, in this case,
the work we're mostly talking about tends to be chemical
in nature as opposed to mechanical. Well, obviously that that's

(15:35):
probably easier to do, I guess, I imagine. So I
mean just getting those microorganisms to be consistent with hitting
those punch cards in and out whenever they're checking in
for the beginning of the day and they're checking out
at the end of the day, that alone is a nightmare.
They're also always just walking in front of the robot.
They get beaten down every time. Yeah. So let's talk

(15:56):
about this paper you found that really became the the
lynch pen for all of the research that we've done
for this topic. It's actually an incredible paper and it's
and it's completely available to read. You can read the
full text for free. So so it was just last week,
I think it was in It was a group of
authors associated with UC Berkeley and with NASA two and

(16:19):
to each and they published a paper called Towards Synthetic
Biological Approaches to Resource Utilization on Space Missions, and this
was in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, and
of course interface here sort of refers to the interface
between different natural and applied sciences. And so the authors,
which were Menezi's cumbers, Hogan and Arkin, claimed that if

(16:42):
you're going to explore or colonize the Moon or Mars,
it makes good sense to develop systems of biological production
to use live organisms to transform things like available volatiles
and waste products into usable resources to keep the crew
members alive and able to do their work on the

(17:03):
mission right. And ideally you would want to have organisms
that could harness whatever resources are going to be available
on the site you're going to Mars, for example, which
would include things like carbon dioxide and nitrogen which are
found on Mars. Also, ideally the outputs of those organisms
will fall into a useful category of material or as
an intermediate feedstock that some other microorganism will consume to

(17:27):
produce the useful material. In other words, they actually talk about,
you know, you could create a system where you have
these microorganisms that take some sort of raw material that
are that that you find on Mars, they convert it
into a different type of material. You have a second
group of microorganisms that consume that new material, they produce

(17:47):
a third type of material, and so on and so
forth until you finally get to where you want to be.
Now they stress that, of course, you want to have
as few intermediates in that relationship as possible because you
want it to be more simple. The added complexity just
means you have added payload because you have to bring
more stuff with you in order to process the different materials.

(18:10):
Oh yeah, it makes sense. You want to streamline your
chemical assembly line, right, and you want to try and
make it effective across multiple outputs. And we'll talk about
the outputs in a little bit, because there are they
identified four big ones and and you want those processes
to apply to as many of those as possible. So
that way, again, you are simplifying your your efforts as

(18:32):
much as you can. Yeah. So, in the simplest possible terms,
you're looking for a way to create a collection of
organisms that sort of eat Martian soil and poop things
that are really useful. That's pretty much it. Yeah, yeah,
the most useful poop in the universe. Well, at least
for as far as we're concerned, And we haven't run

(18:53):
into like, what's the what's the little nibbler on Futurama
that that poops dark matter that US spaceships. We haven't
run into that yet. So barring running into Nibbler, then yes,
so far this is the most useful stuff. Okay, And
so probably we should be fair and say, maybe not
pooping in the way you and I imagine, but at

(19:14):
least creating a byproduct. Please don't imagine the pooping now,
you can't help. But what are what are the pooping,
non pooping byproducts that these powerful little machines could create. Well,
one of the first ones we should mention are drugs
in medicine. Yeah, yeah, there are. In fact, there are
a lot of drugs that we synthesize through uh, using

(19:35):
different types of micro organisms, bacteria, fungi, all sorts of
stuff that we depend upon from the natural world in
order to produce drugs. Uh. You know, even if we're
talking about starting off with something and then creating a
purely synthetic version. We often look at nature as the
first source. So you know, you hear about like um,
natural cures and folk wisdom. A lot of the drugs

(19:58):
we use really are the refined, scientifically arrived at versions
of stuff that has been used in folk cures for
quite sometimes. Oh sure, like we have, you know, chemically
isolated the active ingredient in some piece of tree bark
that acted as a pain reliever. And now you've got
just just that main chemical that was actually doing the

(20:20):
work concentrated in pill form, right in a very predictable
and measurable way. Right. But now that I bring up
the pill form, I do kind of wonder. We'll wait
a second, why would you need to synthesize medicine in space?
Because medicine doesn't really take up that much room or mass.
It's not a significant amount of your payload. And it

(20:41):
turns out there is a good reason you need to
synthesize medicine and space. Yeah, and this was interesting. I
did not know this until we looked at this paper
that medications. You know, there are expiration dates for medications
that tell you when the active ingredient is no longer
going to be as efficacious as it should be. I
always just assume that's a lie, But maybe that's not

(21:03):
at all. Apparently it is not a lie. And apparently
not only is it not a lie, it happens faster
in space, So drugs go go bad. They they lose
their efficacy, they become less effective over time and space
it happens faster. It's the old radiation, isn't it. You know,
I think it's really the microgravity. They just start partying

(21:24):
and then they're tired. Oh no, I'm thinking of the astronauts. Uh,
you know, it's interesting. I think it's it's a cool
idea to bring along micro organism so that you can
continue to create drugs instead of having to rely upon
whatever stores you brought with you. Right, So, once you

(21:44):
get to Mars, apparently it is not all that difficult
to create a system where you could have microbes manufacturing,
for example, a seat amnifin, which is the you know,
a pain killer, right. And there are other drugs that
they might be able to make too, like antibiotics, which
obviously that'd be really useful in small amounts. I mean,
if you want to if you don't run into the

(22:05):
Mars flu every five seconds would be good too. Well,
I mean, I guess we would hope that whatever cold
you catch on Mars is something we brought with us.
And the Martian supervirus, I'd be pretty pretty sure that
it would be something we brought with us. We haven't
detected anything on Mars that would lead us to believe
there are pathogens already there. But yes, you know you

(22:25):
would want to be able to make this kind of stuff,
especially if you know again the the useful uh lifespan
of it would be effective or really drastically shortened by
space travel. Okay, well, let's go from a tiny part
of the payload to the big cahuna. Fuel. Yeah, this

(22:46):
is the big one, right. So, according to that Royal
Society paper, about two thirds the entire mass of a
rocket bound for Mars and destined to return to Earth
would be fuel. So the more stuff you want to
bring with you, the more fuel you need. And again,
like we said, it's not that simple ratio. The more
fuel you need, the more fuel you're gonna need to
move that fuel, and you have to find just the
right balance there. Uh. Now, the paper says that if

(23:08):
we could make fuel on Mars. We could cut that down,
cut down on the amount we need by a factor
of two to three, which is significant. And Uh. Further,
the paper goes on to say, Okay, look, there are
lots of different types of rocket fuel out there, and
a lot of them are really chemically quite complex, and
to make them requires a long production uh process that

(23:33):
you cannot realistically find a way of of matching using
the synthetic biology. It's just not in the cards. However,
there is one type of fuel that you could create
that we could do it right now with synthetic biology,
which would be a methane oxygen fuel. So liquid methane

(23:54):
is something that we could produce um using micro organisms
and the base I stuff that you would find on Mars,
maybe bringing some stuff along with us in order to
do it, because yeah, you can use hydrogen and carbon
dioxide to make methane oxygen fuel. Uh. And it relies
on stuff like acetogens, which are microorganisms that create acetate

(24:17):
as a product of respiration and other microorganisms can convert
the acetate into nitrogen compounds. Oh. By the way, Uh,
we have acetogen's really close by us. Did you see that?
They They include some of the microflora found in human feces.
That's pleasant. Uh. Then you also have methanogens which can

(24:39):
convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane boom. So that yeah, exactly,
You're gonna be careful with that stuff, right. Um, So
there's also you. It was interesting you had this note
here about nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons, which is currently preferred
for safety and efficacy, but we're not sure how to
produce it biologically. That that's a problem. So it may
be stuck with the liquid methane thane fuel. But here's

(25:01):
the really really oh right, this is you, isn't it. No,
it is me. Here's the really super cool part. So
the Royal Society team Ransom numbers to see how much
mass we'd have to bring to Mars if we want
to create a methane oxygen propellant while we're at Mars.
So you'd have to take some fuel with you to
launch from Earth. Yeah, we couldn't just automatically get there

(25:23):
with you know, fuel free, right. But the the idea
is either in transit or once you land on Mars,
you set up a fuel production factory that consists of
these microorganisms. Right. The idea being what's the bare minimum
amount of fuel that we could put on a launch vehicle, um,
you know, just just as a way of getting two Mars.

(25:44):
And so they came up with a couple of different methods.
One was, if we just produce oxygen on Mars, so
we bring everything else we need to create methane oxygen
fuel with us, but we leave the oxygen production for
the when we're actually on the planet. We would need
to ship seven thousand, five D twelve kilograms and methane

(26:05):
to Mars in order to have enough to lift off again. Now,
if we produce both oxygen and methane our Mars, we
would need to ship just three thousand, two hundred fifty
one ms of hydrogen there to fuel the production of
the methane oxygen fuel while we're on the planet, which
is less than half the mass of what we would
need if we were only concentrate on oxygen. Now, if

(26:26):
we want to step further and said, how about we
tried to produce the hydrogen on Mars as well. And
the way we would do that is we would collect
water from the soil of Mars. We would evaporate the
water out of the soil we would then use electrolysis
to break the molecular bonds so that you get hydrogen
gas and oxygen gas um. And if if we use

(26:46):
that methodology, then we could cut it down to between
two thousand, twenty one and two thousand, six hundred fifty
eight kilograms. Now, remember we started with seven thousand, five
hundred and twelve and that was already assuming we were
going to produce socks gen on Mars. That's not even
like if we were talking about just pure fuel to
get there and get back without ever making fuel on Mars,

(27:07):
you start getting into huge, huge numbers, and it it
quickly becomes problematic. Yeah, so this is a really interesting idea. Uh,
the you know, I don't fully understand the processes, the
actual like lab process. That means you're not a rocket scientists,
nor am I some sort of micro organisms fuel scientists.

(27:30):
It's not a microbiologist either. So so both of those
are true, and so I think we can take them
at their word for now, and so we hear response
by other people in the community. So let's go to
another big thing that's part of our trip and making
sure that we survive, not just to get there and
get back but to survive the entire way, and that's

(27:51):
a that's some tasty yum yums, well maybe somewhat tasty.
I don't know if they qualify as yum yums. Maybe
maybe almost numb numbs. You know. We need some sort
of sustenance, however, some some barely edible, somewhat nutritious food
that people can keep down while they're up there. So

(28:15):
one of the paper talks about a resupply mission to
the International Space Station. Yeah, they So they say that
typically more than half of a resupply mission the cargo
is food, and they specified there was one recent mission
they looked at which was fifty nine percent food by weight.
And that space food we're talking about, that's presumably mostly

(28:36):
or totally dehydrated food. Yeah, you would add water once
there and prepared to to eat your shrump cocktail. Mush.
We had a nice long discussion about shump cocktail. But
we're going to talk about space food in a minute, Okay, fair,
I won't, I won't. I won't spoil it then, uh,
And this is not really practical for people who are
headed to Mars, where you can't get that resupply mission regularly.

(28:59):
Like I was saying before you need to have, uh,
you know, some way of producing food, because you're probably
not gonna be able to carry all the food you're
gonna need for that incredibly long mission, you know, the
eight month or so flight out to Mars, the year
or more that you're going to be spending on Mars
before you can take another eight month flight back. That's

(29:20):
a long time, you know. I have a question actually,
which is how much food does an astronaut need? Oh? Well,
and I wonder how that compares to what you need
on Earth because an astronaut, you know, they have to
exercise constantly in order to prevent too much decay of
the bones and muscles. Uh And and how does that
factor into how many calories they need? Well, I can

(29:41):
tell you that they eat about one point eight three
kilograms of food per day each person. Does I don't
know the caloric value of that one point eight three
ms um, I don't know. Like it's just straight up
pork dripping, ye, it's yeah, it's it's just pork rinds,
Just bags and bags of wark grinds up on the
is s s. No, like we were saying, I think

(30:03):
most of that is going to be dehydrated packaged food
that's shipped up it. You know, it's been designed by
the chefs at NASA. Now I didn't. I don't know
for a fact if the one point eight three kilograms
of food per person per day is based on the
dehydrated amount or the quote unquote wet food, because they

(30:24):
do talk about there's a difference between dehydrated and wet
in the paper, because you know, you can ship stuff
up dry, add water to it to make the wet food,
or you could have it all be wet food to
begin with, which adds mass obviously because you've got water there.
You know, the term wet food makes me think of
the canned dog dog cat. So if we wanted to

(30:48):
go to Mars, so this, this is how much we
would need to take with us for an entire trip,
which includes flying out there, staying on the plant, and
then coming back, we need to ship ten thousand, five
the eight kilograms of food to last the whole trip.
That's based on six astronauts um. And that's the conservative estimate.
So according to the paper Snacks No no midnight snacking.

(31:11):
Going to the paper, about five thousands of quote vegetarian
wet food end quote could come from local crops. So
I imagined this would be similar to the approach that
the Mars One Colony proposes, which is they want to
use hydroponic farming techniques to grow food crops on the

(31:31):
surface of Mars. Really, it's probably under the surface of
Mars because it's probably an underground greenhouses because there are
radiation issues if you are on the surface. UM. So,
according to the paper, yeah, we would still have to
bring more than four thousand kilograms with us in order
to UH to have the entire trip accounted for, because

(31:54):
you know, you need to have enough food to get there.
Once you're there, you can start growing food and use
that to supplement it. So they said that this could
also come from a different source, not just local crops.
If you didn't want to go the hydro product crop route,
you could grow arthur Spira plat tensis and arthur Spira maxima,

(32:15):
which together formed voltron No, actually they become spiro Leina.
Have you ever heard of spirolina? And not before today?
So spiro Lena. Actually had had heard of this, but
I didn't know much about it. Um. It's often sold
as a food supplement. It's specifically sold to vegetarians as
a food supplement because it is it's got a lot

(32:38):
of proteins in it. In fact, it has like all
the major amino acids are involved in a uh in
in this so you you wouldn't miss out on any
So vegetarians often take this as a supplement so in
case they're not getting enough protein through their other parts
of their diet. Um. And it's stuff that the Aztecs
used to eat. It's technically a cyanobacteria that lives in

(33:00):
tropical lakes that have happened to have a high pH level,
so they need that environment really to survive. Uh. And
it's sold as a food supplement everywhere also as a
whole food. I mean, there are people who make cakes
out of this stuff. That's what the Aztecs used to do.
And uh. The only thing that really I know about

(33:20):
that is something to take as a precautionary warning, is
that it doesn't necessarily serve as a good source for
vitamin B twelve, So you could suffer a vitamin B
twelve shortage if you didn't have some other means of
supplementing this food. Presumably they would plan ahead and either
have that in other food stores or have a supplement. Yeah,
because the supplement that's often packaged with this stuff in uh,

(33:44):
you know, often it will say it's it's fortified with
it or whatever. A lot of that doesn't end up
being biologically active when you take these things. So it's
actually a real problem. You need to have a good
source of B twelve. But using this approach, the spirolina approach,
the shipping mass for food would be cut down to
two thousand three two ms uh and the mission would

(34:05):
include bioreactors in which space travelers could cultivate the spiralina.
So you'd be cultivating the scum you need for dinner. Yes,
I mean we're talking about cyano bacteria right here. So
this is a k A blue green algae scum in
the ocean that is responsible for all the lakes. But yes,

(34:26):
well sure, yeah, there's cyanobacteria specific stuff is from lakes freshwater. Correct,
you are so it would it would not be salty
cyano bacteria scum. Yeah. There's no discussion about how they
would augment the texture or taste of this stuff. This
is purely a could we do could we achieve the

(34:49):
goal of producing food using a synthetic biology. It's not
so much a do we want to do this because
you right, well, now I can see that the main
advantage of this would be on a very extended journey, right,
a long trip to Mars or to an asteroid or
something like that. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, not so much

(35:10):
for the Moon or something close, because those bioreactors have masks,
they take up space on your ship, they have mass.
You have to spend fuel to launch them out there.
And if your trip is going to be a relatively
short one, as it would be for a lunar mission,
then uh, you know you you're not going to be
producing enough food to justify it would actually be cheaper

(35:30):
to put all the food you're going to need on
that launch vehicle rather than to bring the bioreactors along
if it's going to be a short trip. It's only
when it's a long trip that starts to pay off.
And uh, but I've had in the paper they mentioned
that you could still use this on a lunar mission,
specifically to test it as a proof of concept. Right, Well,
I think it would be very important to test something

(35:52):
like this ahead of time because, as we know from
reading about the experiences of people on the I S. S.
Food tastes different in space. Yeah, I mean the astronauts
report this that you might you might taste a meal
on Earth to try to figure out, Okay, what do
what menu items do I want to have available to
me when I go up on the I S. S.

(36:13):
And you decide you like this, that and the other.
You know, it's very steak, is amazing, exactly, I want
I want fifty cartons very steak uboard the I S. S.
And then it turns out you get up there and
something's happen to your body when you're in a microgravity environment.
Suddenly all these fluids that were originally in your legs
and your feet and stuff flow up into your head.
You get sinus congestion. It's like having a really bad

(36:36):
cold for a while, and and even after that, supposedly
that subsides somewhat after a number of weeks, but even then,
they're just problems with tasting in space. It's different than
it is on Earth. It's the different experience. You're in
an environment that's saturated with recirculating strange smells and can't

(36:57):
necessarily smell the food that you're trying to eat. Yeah,
it's just all out of whack, basically, And and so
it's strange that if you've never heard this before, be
prepared for a surprise. What do you think the most
popular rehydrated meal on the I S S Is? We
already mentioned it earlier in the episode. It is, in
fact shrimp cocktail that is so disgusting. I don't know

(37:20):
what they're talking. I don't know what you're gay. Where
your problem is with this idea of it being disgusting?
How is this more disgusting than any other kind of
dehydrated food because it's shrimp. I don't know. I don't
get it, though, dude, I mean, like, like like sea
monkeys are dehydrated shrimp. Well, I think I think people
generally acknowledge, like you know, shrimp cocktail just doesn't sound

(37:41):
like the best thing to dehydrate and rehydrate in space.
But they love it. Astronauts can't get enough of it.
And I've heard I've heard it speculated that the reason
they love it so much is that the cocktail sauce
has a horseradish kick in it, and the spiciness of
it sort of brings back the magic to your mouth.
And know didn't you say there was an astronaut who

(38:02):
asked that all of his meals be that. Oh yeah,
Now I can't remember what the person's name was, but
there was somebody who ate shrimp cocktail. Just continuous morning, noon,
and night. It's shrimp cocktail all the time. Um. But now,
I I had said, and this was before we went
into the studio, I had said that I have imagined
that he landed and never wanted shrimp cocktail ever again. Yeah,

(38:23):
so we'll see. But anyway, all of this is in
service of the point that you definitely need to plan
ahead for what things are going to taste like in space.
And on top of that, this isn't trivial. Taste matters
in space because morale matters in space, and if your
astronauts are not getting nutritious food that's at least somewhat palatable,

(38:44):
it can be a big problem for the mission. Yeah,
especially when that's going to take more than a year
to complete. I mean, you know, if you're if you're
three months in and you're already feeling really depressed because
you know the food is unpalatable to you, then you know,
and you know that you've got more than a year
of that food to look forward to. That's an issue,
but no one thing we should point out though, is

(39:04):
that the issues that people run into in space may
not in fact be the same as those that they
encounter once they're on the surface of the planet. That
that's a good point. I was actually wondering about exactly
that fact. So obviously, if you're traveling to Mars, a
lot of this is going to be like being on
the I. S. S. You know, you'll have this fluid redistribution,
and so probably it will affect the way things taste.

(39:28):
I wonder if things, if you're on the surface of
Mars in a sort of buried habitat there, does your
sense of taste and smell return to more like what
it would have been on Earth? Or is it more
like what it is in space? Well, I mean you
still have is it something completely different? Would probably be different.
I mean I would imagine to be kind of similar
to what you encounter. And like any place where you

(39:49):
get a lot of recirculated air, so imagine an airplane
where you get a lot of recirculated air. It's the
same sort of thing, because you know you're not getting
any fresh air because you can't know on Mars. However,
Mars does have gravity. It's it's much greater than micro gravity.
You have maybe what about third the the strength of
Earth's gravity. Uh, So you know, your fluid distribution would

(40:12):
be more akin to what it is on Earth. So
you wouldn't have necessarily the same sort of scinus issues
that you would have in in microgravity. Uh. And you
would not have to worry as much about opening up
a food item and not being able to, you know,
really smell it, because you know on a space in
a space environment, you have to make sure you're not

(40:34):
emitting anything that's gonna get into important equipment. Right. You can't.
You can't just squirt the shrimp cocktail all over the place.
You know, you're you're just rough housing over aboard the
I S S. You can't do that. But on Mars
it sounds big of an issue, So things like the
smell of food could become more of an important factor.

(40:55):
Of course, if you're thinking, do I want to smell
cyano bacteria grouped into cakes, that's a different question. I
would smell like I don't know either, I've never had it.
Well anyway, the whole point is, yes, you need to
test this in space first and and tested on the Moon.
I think that's crucial because you can't settle these people
with disgusting grubbins for three years or what two and

(41:17):
a half two and a half, so yeah, something I think.
I think it's not quite two and a half. Like
I remember the paper talked about being nine something days,
so a two and a half to three years somewhere
in between there. Yeah. So we've talked about medicine, we've
talked about fuel, we've talked about food. There's one more

(41:37):
big one that I think is very important. Now here's
a good question. Let's say you're going to space, and
you know there's this whole range of tools and building
materials you might need, but you don't know exactly how
many of them you're going to need for sure, or

(42:00):
or maybe you just notice that some of these tools,
while they would be very useful when once we get
to Mars, are kind of unwieldy in shape and would
be difficult to store on the way they're there, you know,
volumetrically inconvenient. Why don't you just print them in space?
This is an idea that's been explored and we've talked
about it. On the show before three D printing for

(42:20):
space exploration. So instead of taking up all these tools
and building materials, you instead take a lump sum of
printing material and then you can print the items you
need once you're there. I think that makes good sense,
But you can do one step even better. Don't even
take the bulk materials to begin with. Take some microorganisms

(42:42):
that can convert whatever stuff happens to be on the
planet you're visiting. That will then convert that into the
bio polymers that you need to print stuff. Brilliant. Yeah. Now,
now this again could really cut down on the amount
of launch mass you need for your mission. That would
require the team to print out stuff that they need,

(43:04):
and that could include things like habitats, It could include
like it, it could include big stuff. And really, again,
the team that was writing this paper was just looking
into the feasibility, like is it possible to have a
microorganism create the stuff that could potentially go into a
device like a three D printer, And they found that yes,
that is feasible. It doesn't mean that we can do

(43:26):
it right now, It just means that there's no reason
we couldn't pursue that as an option. Oh, bioplastics are
a huge thing. Yeah. Sure, it seems totally feasible to
me that you can have a microbial factory for producing
the plastics you need to make a you know, slat
that goes on the side of a habitat. Yeah. So again,
this could really cut down not just on the bulk material.

(43:47):
I mean again, it just it creates more room for
other stuff. It means that you also have a more
self sustaining mission that is capable of handling things when
the unexpected occurs, like when something you had not accounted for,
like a tool breaks. Then with this system you would
get more of whatever raw material with the microorganisms needed

(44:09):
to convert into biopolymer, then put that into the three
D printer and print yourself a new tool whenever the
old one has worn out or broken, and you don't
have to worry about that kind of situation completely throwing
the mission into jeopardy. I think that's an excellent idea.
And I also want to do a little aside that
you might find amusing. Okay, it's a note about academic

(44:31):
language usage in the way people write papers, right, I
don't want to denigrate their research. These guys are brilliant.
But I kept seeing a certain phrase in this paper
and I was like, what the heck is three dimensional printing?
So so we have completely gone beyond using the actual
words three dimensional to the point where I didn't recognize

(44:54):
what that was. It didn't register as three D printing team, Right,
that's pretty funny. Yeah, we're we've gotten to the point
where three D itself means something and three dimensional doesn't
necessarily evoke that. That is amusing. We also wanted to
briefly talk about another thing that we would obviously need
on any space exploration mission, which is oxygen. Now, the

(45:16):
the various the paper doesn't address oxygen, right, and I
think that makes sense because it's less of a synthetic
biology concern and just the fact that you might have
plants or algae or you know, things that exist already
to produce breathable oxygen and habitat Mars one specifically was
looking into creating oxygen through electrolysis, again, taking the water

(45:38):
from the Martian soil and using electrical current to separate
out the hydrogen and oxygen, and then to mix in
some nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere. Because you don't want
to breathe pure oxygen. No, so yeah, exactly, you want
to be able to to supply your mission with oxygen.
You know, we need it to breathe. But we can't

(46:00):
carry all that with us either. But usually these systems
involved things like electrolysis or like you said, photosynthesis, some
sort of um other method to generate the oxygen we need,
as opposed to just uh, you know, create a microorganism
that poops air. That one's not listed in the paper,
So if you want to be more elegant, you could

(46:21):
say it exhales air. Yeah, I could say that. Yeah,
it's something that that respirates and it breathes out oxygen
and maybe breathes in carbon dioxy. I guess the term
is excretes it. It puts it out there. So we
have a lot of different challenges here. One of those
is just being able to make use of whatever the
resources are at the destinations we're going to. And because

(46:43):
I mean this comes up in the paper, going to
the Moon and going to Mars are different in terms
of the chemical elements available in say the soil exactly, yeah,
Martian soil and lunar regules, which is what we call
the the soil on the Moon have very very us
some oxides and other elements in them that you can
find in one but not the other. So you may

(47:05):
be able to come up with a micro organism that
could work really well in one environment but not so
well on the other. Which is that's problematic because normally
we would say, how about we use the Moon as
kind of a testing grounds for a lot of this
technology to make sure it works before we commit to
a Martian expedition where people are going to be much

(47:26):
further away for much longer, and uh thus their lives
will literally depend upon this technology working. But if we
can't really test it effectively on the Moon, at least
not without you know, some caveats, then that's a little
that's challenging. Right The Moon is at least where we
should test the algae cakes. Yes, yeah, which again they

(47:49):
point out that in the case of going to the
Moon would actually be less efficient than just packing all
the fooji exactly. But this is not a matter of efficiency,
it's a matter of testing the technology. Uh So it
is really interesting. And again, the the paper itself looks
at four main components as the inputs. You know, we

(48:11):
talked about the four outputs, which are four main chemicals
that you would feed these microbes right right, Because the
four outputs we've already talked about drugs, biopolymers, food, and fuel. Well,
the inputs would be carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen.
So it is really interesting that they're looking at these
four basics and they said, all right, well, how can
we take these four basic things that we can get

(48:34):
either we can ship to the place we're going to,
or we can harvest it from that environment, and how
can we get these four outputs we want? And in
some cases, like I said, it's going to require intermediaries,
some some intermediate steps between the beginning and the end.
But how can they cut that down to the bare
minimum to be as quote quote greedy end quote as possible?

(48:57):
That's the that's the phrase they used to say, like,
how can we maximize these inputs to try and get
as much of these outputs as we possibly can. It's
fascinating to me to think that the the they're they're
treating these microbes like common office workers. I was gonna
say that to me, it's remarkable that the success of
our long term space exploration initiatives could come down to

(49:21):
dependence on these micro organisms like that. Really, the the
future of long term space missions could be in these
little you know, the different types of bacteria and algae
and things like that. UM really interesting. It makes me
less likely to sign up for a trip over to

(49:42):
Mars because I don't know that I want to eat
algae cakes for two three years. Somehow I feel like
I'd rather have algae cakes than than shrimp cocktail in space.
But maybe I'd changed my tune once I got my
fluids redistributed. Bonkers, man, I don't know what it is
about the dehydrated trimp cocktail that gy. What need to
do is we need to get some. We need to

(50:02):
get a pack of dehydrated shrimp cocktail as used in
space missions and do a taste test. NASA kitchen, if
you're listening here, we are. I send the house stuff works. Yeah. Yeah,
that that's me. I'm the bald guy. Yeah, absolutely, I would.
I would try it in a heartbeat. I would. I'll

(50:24):
try it with you, Okay, alright, So that you got
at least two of the three hosts, we might be
able to get Lauren in on this. I don't know, Lauren,
Lauren uh there's certain foods that don't agree with Lauren,
so I don't I don't want to speak for her,
but we will at least offer her a spoonful of dehydrated,
reconstituted shrimp cocktail that we have probably rehydrated in some way.

(50:47):
I'll try it. I've I've eaten worse stuff. I believe
you can it with the bravado. I'll take you at
your words, all right, Well, at any rate, I think
this wraps up our discussion about synthetic biology and ace
travel and how it could be a really integral part
of how we get around and how we survive on
these missions. Yeah. I thought this paper was fascinating, And

(51:09):
if you're interested in reading all of the technical details
and in full, the text is available online just to
look it up. Yeah it uh. It took me three
or four reading sessions to get all the way through it,
because there's a lot that synthesize, you know, it's just
a lot of information and a lot of a lot
of of chemistry that um, you know, I frankly had

(51:30):
to take time to really understand because it was well
beyond my my poor recollection of chemistry from my school days,
but very fascinating stuff and guys, if you have any
suggestions for future episodes of Forward Thinking. Maybe you've got
a topic that's been um, you know, just eating at
you and you want us to cover it. Let us know.
Send us an email our addresses f W Thinking at

(51:53):
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