Growing your own food in space

links courtesy Behind the Black Blog

One thing I didn't expect was that people need 3.8 lbs of food per day in space.  For a trip to Mars, that translates into 7000 lbs of food per person.  Such a large mass has to be lifted and powered to Mars and back.  This is a big hurdle that must be overcome if such a mission is to ever be attempted.  One way to accomplish that is to grow your own food in space.  In fact, the more of everything that can be recycled, the less weight that will have to be carried along.  This will greatly simplify the mission.

The point that the blog's author Zimmerman is making is that NASA isn't doing this kind of research.  Could that be one of the reasons why they are having to plan so many rocket launches in order to get the crew sufficiently supplied for such a mission?

Consider this:  For every pound that gets to orbit, you may need up to 100 lbs of launch weight.  If you reduce that in half by growing your own food, that will help a whole lot.  If you reduce it by 90%, it may even eliminate some of those launches.