NASA just threw a $125,000, six-month grant at a project by Anjan Contractor, a mechanical engineer at Systems and Materials Research Corporation in Austin to develop a working prototype of his proposed universal food synthesizer.
The feedstocks for this device, including all the carbs, proteins, macro, and micro nutrients are in powder form. Does placing 3D food printers in households allow a world population, that’s on its way to an estimated nine billion people by 2040, to synthesize healthy meals from powder-filled cartridges? Such dehydrated food stocks would have long shelf lives.
In light of all this it would seem the Star Trek food replicators are really not all that far off. The fictional devices featured in that series were capable of fiddling with reality at the subatomic level to reproduce pretty much anything edible. Also not far off is the Mission to Mars. 78,000 people recently applied for Mars One. The ETA for the first colonists on that mission is just ten years from now in 2023. How would you pack for that little trek?
