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NASA Supports Pizza Printer
NASA seems to be taking sfnal approaches to feeding astronauts seriously, as they announce their award of a $125,000 grant to investigate a food printer for long space voyages.
(Printing chocolate cookies - a proof-of-concept)
Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer.But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store...
His initial grant from NASA, under its Small Business Innovation Research program, is for a system that can print food for astronauts on very long space missions. For example, all the way to Mars.
“Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf life,” says Contractor. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”
There is something very pedestrian about watching a printer create something for you - I'm not sure if I want to watch my food being printed. Although I've certainly imagined it - see Hungry? Print Yourself Some Bacon.
Children of the Sixties of course remember the cool food synthesizer from Star Trek: TOS.
(Star Trek food synthesizer)
You might be interested in my earlier article Fictional Foodstuffs: The Snacks Of Science Fiction for some of the great science-fictional food processors.
Via QZ.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/20/2013)
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