Description
A cena su Marte arises from a simple and concrete question: when humans realize their colonial fantasy on the red planet, what will they eat? What foods will be available in a desert environment, with a gravity one third of ours and an average temperature of over 60 degrees below zero? Evan D.G. Fraser and Lenore Newman show us how the answers to these questions could help us not only put something on our space tables but also solve future food problems on Earth. While raising a cow on Olympus Mons, the peak over 25 kilometers high that dominates Mars, is unlikely, astronauts will not have to give up hamburgers and cutlets – even if they will be made from cell-cultured meat, produced in a lab. If imagining cultivated fields on Vastitas Borealis, the immense lowland of the northern hemisphere of the planet, is unrealistic, “raising” cyanobacteria will allow us to continue consuming fruits and vegetables even in extreme conditions. And although it may seem disgusting to us, our Martian ice cream will be made from delicious fermented yeasts. From hydroponic crops to synthetic proteins, Fraser and Newman guide us in discovering food technologies already tested and their potential applications, both 228 million kilometers away and at our latitudes. This book illustrates how imagining a totally self-sufficient community in seemingly inhospitable places is also a way to question our food system, which today is already unable to provide healthy and fair nutrition for all and to face the challenges of climate change, to propose new agricultural models – that reduce fertilizers, pollution, and waste – and safeguard our future. Because the options on our menu for tomorrow will not only concern what we will have on our plate but the world we want to build.
