Embodied Energy

Abstract

In recent years, images of wheat and soybeans growing in giant chambers on the moon or Mars have claimed a significant share of my professional attention. I have been part of a futuristic NASA program that envisions a day when people are permanently extraterrestrial. Like humans everywhere, these explorers and colonists will need to eat. But the costs of transporting every loaf of bread or sack of potatoes from the deep gravity well of Earth would be—pardon the expression —astronomical and thus prohibitive. The astronauts should be as self-reliant as possible. They should grow their own food.