It would take a lot of food to get
astronauts to Mars, but what if they could get whatever they wanted at the push
of a button?
NASA is funding an ambitious 3-D printing
food project that wants to make that happen, Quartz reports. The space agency's
handing over to mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor and his company, Systems
& Materials Research Corporation, to spend building a prototype universal
food synthesizer. And it could make pizza.
Contractor's food synthesizer would print
layers of food from cartridges of powders and oils, creating a perfectly
nutritious meal. (It can actually print from any "organic" material
with the right ingredients inside, so insect-based pizza may be the
proteinaceous meal of choice.) Contractor has already made a chocolate printer
as a proof of concept, and now is moving on to a pizza printer.
A pie's a good candidate for this because
its made from discrete sections. Each print head would only have the job of
printing : either the dough, which would be cooked by a hot plate while being
printed; the sauce, which would be a mixture of tomato powder, oil, and water;
or the ambiguous, gross-sounding "protein layer," which could be made
from milk, animals, or plants.
The cartridges would all have a 30-year
shelf-life, enough time for, say, a trip to Mars. The astronauts can switch to
real cooking once they get there.
It is a report from popsci.In fact,maybe if
this device is developed ,it can not only used in Mars,it is also useful and convenient
on earth.
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