In 2017, Elon Musk laid out his grand sweeping
plans for the future of SpaceX, the company that would take humanity to Mars. Over decades, tens of thousands of Starship
flights would carry a million human beings to the surface of the Red Planet, the minimum
Musk expects it’ll take to create a self-sustaining civilization. The number of details in an effort like this
is mind-boggling. What about the reduced gravity, radiation
exposure, and space madness? What about return flights? Replacement parts? Building materials? What’s everyone going to eat? Of all the technologies we’ll need to master
for anyone to live on Mars, let alone a million human beings, food might actually be one of
the biggest challenges. That’s because Mars brings almost nothing
to the table when it comes to growing the vast amount of food that humans require. We don’t think there are any native plants
and animals, and Earth can’t keep resupplying a Mars colony forever with care packages from
home. That defeats the whole idea of self-sufficient. Martians are going to need to produce their
food locally. And that means harnessing everything at their
disposal on the Red Planet, using the latest technology of food production to keep everyone
fed. But will they scale up to a million people? In a new paper published in the Journal New
Space called “Feeding One Million People on Mars”, Kevin M Cannon and Daniel T. Britt
provide an overview of the technologies that will need to be used for Martian food production,
and what their limitations will be. Obviously you can’t grow plants right on
the surface of Mars, the freezing cold and low atmospheric pressure would wipe out a
plant before it could even sprout from a seed. There’s no usable organic material in the
Martian regolith, and the top layer even contains toxic perchlorates. The traditional idea is that Martian gardeners
will grow their crops in giant greenhouses, starting plants in the regolith with added
organic material. You’ve seen the Martian, you know what I’m
describing. And it should be relatively straightforward
to wash the regolith to remove the perchlorates. But according to Cannon and Britt, this probably
won’t be the case in the beginning. Martian plants won’t touch the regolith. Instead, they’ll be grown hydroponically
in nutrient-rich solutions using supplies brought from Earth. Let me show you a specific example of what
this might look like. One of the most hostile places on Earth to
human life is Antartica, but in 2018, scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station II in Antarctica
harvested a huge crop of vegetables that were grown completely hydroponically. They were grown in the EDEN ISS greenhouse,
which is a completely self-contained growing environment with LED grow lights, hydroponic
nutrients, and atmospheric control. Over the course of 9.5 months, they were able
to produce 268 kilograms of food using only 12.5 square meters of space. They were able to grow cucumbers, lettuce,
and tomatoes that taste as good as what you might grow in your own garden. One person needed an average of 3-4 hours
a day of effort to grow the plants. There’s no reason to think this technique
wouldn’t work on Mars, although managing the atmosphere would be more challenging since
you can’t just open up a window when it gets a little too humid in your greenhouse. Worried about the low gravity? We already know that it’s possible to grow
plants in space. There’s an experiment onboard the International
Space Station called the Veggie Plant Growth System, which was installed in May 2016. This small greenhouse contains three different
types of lettuce, grown in a hydroponic medium with LED grow lights. Astronauts regularly harvest the lettuce and
make salads using dressing sent up from Earth. A scaled-up version is called the Advanced
Plant Habitat, which is a growing chamber the size of a mini-fridge. It’s designed to test how different plants
respond to microgravity and is almost entirely autonomous, regulating temperature, nutrients,
and water. Recently the system was used to grow dwarf
wheat in microgravity, and it looked pretty normal. Which plants should you grow when you can
start farming in the Martian regolith? Edward Guinan, a professor at Villanova recently
carried out an experiment with his undergraduate astrobiology class called The Red Thumbs:
Mars Garden Project. They tested out how well different plants
would grow in simulated Martian regolith, and most importantly, how do they taste? It turns out barley, basil, kale, hops, onions,
garlic, lettuce, sweet potatoes, and mint did well. Let me reiterate so it’s clear; hops and
barley grown on Mars, taste just as good as when they’re grown on Earth. I’ll try a Martian beer. Okay, so what else is on the menu for Mars? According to the paper I referenced earlier,
Cannon and Britt suggest that we’d get our protein from plants, as well as, uh, crickets. They’re packed with protein but easier to
farm than a herd of cattle, and there are plenty of companies here on Earth that would
be glad to sell you crickets in almost any edible form you can imagine. There are also some incredible advances in
cultured meat, with bioreactors producing beef burgers and chicken that’s never been
on an animal. Cucumbers, crickets, and cultured meat but
at least you get to drink Martian beer. How does the operation scale up to support
a million people? We’ll get to that in a second, but first
I’d like to thank: Mark Bennett
Tracy Forward David Dunn
Esquilax And the rest of our 829 patrons for their
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to anyone in the world. The Patrons make this possible. Join our community at patreon.com/universetoday
and get in on the action. Cannon and Britt built a model to simulate
the food needs of a population on Mars growing to a million people over the course of 100
Earth years. They assumed the colonists would arrive 150
at a time on rockets from Earth, and factored in natural birth and death rates. They also assumed that there would be healthy
births on Mars and a natural rise to the local population. They calculated that it would take almost
200,000 supply ships if no food was grown on Mars to keep the inhabitants fed. But if they could get their local food operation
rolling, that number would drop down to just over 50,000 supply ships over the entire 100
years. They could reach self-sufficiency within 40
years if more labor was set aside for farming, with cargo ships carrying more farming supplies. This means less food, and more hydroponics
gear and grow lights, but over time the advantages really add up. They’d only need 6,500 food deliveries. And if everyone focused all their efforts
on food production, they could reach complete self-sufficiency within about 20 years, with
only 209 food deliveries. With each person requiring 46 square meters
of land, the growing space would end up requiring 46 square kilometers. This could be done in tunnels measuring about
4 meters across. 14,500 kilometers of tunnels. Incredibly, a single Boring Company tunneling
machine could make all these tunnels if necessary over the course of 53 years. Want to be one of the people who travel to
Mars, but your Starship flight isn’t booked yet? Good news, you can adapt your diet right away. The researchers have a companion website called
Eat Like a Martian, with a free guide that’ll let you eat the kinds of fruit vegetables,
insect products and cultured meats that will be the basis of a Martian diet. Although it’s currently science fiction
to imagine a permanent human colony on Mars, improvements in technology have a way of making
science fiction eventually become reality. And even if it turns out that Mars isn’t
a great place to live, these same technologies will be required for any self-sustaining colony,
whether it’s on the Moon, an asteroid, or in artificial gravity space stations in the
Earth-Moon Lagrange Points. In fact, these technologies will help us feed
the humans who already live here on Earth, producing a smaller impact on the environment. No matter what happens, we should master the
technology of food production, in any environment. What do you think? Would you go to Mars now that you know there’ll
be good beer? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Here are the names of the Patrons who support
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Universe Today on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I’ll put a link in the show notes. There are a few tricky details to landing
humans on Mars, such as making it through the Martian atmosphere. It’s surprisingly difficult to reach the
surface, and NASA is pushing the limits of current technology with 1 ton payloads. Here’s a video that explains why it’s
such a challenge.
