MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
NASA investing in 3D ‘pizza printer’ for astronauts long space missions
Images of the 3D chocolate printer at work With concerns about our ability to feed 12 billion people by the end of the century, one engineer is looking to replace conventional food with something produced by a 3D printer, and he’s getting a grant from NASA to create a prototype.
The 125.000 dollars grant gives Anjan Contractor and his company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, six months to create a prototype.
Contractor ultimately expects to see a 3D printer in every kitchen, replacing food with powder and oil cartridges loaded into a printer to create custom meals for an individual’s diet and nutritional needs.
The 3D printers could end food waste as Quartz reports cartridges would be shelf-stable for up to 30 years.
The immediate goal of the grant isn’t as far-reaching. NASA hopes the grant, under its Small Business Innovation Research program, will yield a product that will allow astronauts to print food during long space missions.
A video of Contractor’s chocolate printer sets the foundation for his current concept, the “pizza printer.”
The prototype will print the layers of a pizza, starting with the dough, and heat the food as it’s printed.
Similar to other 3D printers, recipes can be shared as software with instructions telling the printer how much sugar, complex carbohydrate and protein to mix at each layer.
Contractor has competition in the “food of the future” category. A Missouri-based company is currently researching 3D bio-printers while a doctor in the Netherlands is testing the use of stem cells to grow your future meals.
Contractor says the current food system can’t meet a growing population’s needs and people must have an open mind.
“Eventually we will have to change our perception of what we see as food,” Contractor said.
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Read all comments12 billion by 2100?
Jun 14th, 2013 - 01:24 am 0Current estimates see at maybe dropping back to 7 billion by 2100. However there will still be a need for more food as relative poverty levels will have dropped.
It's a great idea. In developed countries it would probably be more used and useful by poorer people. However in countries with high poverty levels, such as India, Argentina and African countries it will have a greater impact dealing with malnutrition and hunger for the lower classes.
So much cool stuff coming.
Jun 14th, 2013 - 12:16 pm 0I seriously wonder what will happen to failed countries in the next generation.
If some of them are ever able to visit the 1st world it will be like they went to OZ from Kansas. Black and White to Color.
My bet is someplace like Argentina the common people will not even have the ability to communicate with the outside world. They'll be working with teh equivalent of the rotary phone when the rest of us have some sort of telecommunications device implanted at birth.
“Contractor ultimately expects to see a 3D printer in every kitchen, replacing food with powder and oil cartridges loaded into a printer to create custom meals for an individual’s diet and nutritional needs.”
Jun 14th, 2013 - 03:35 pm 0Add 3 parts of the blue flavor, with 2 parts of the red flavor... and it will taste like the purple flavor!
Yes, I know it's a really neat and fascinating idea and will benefit astronauts on space travel who will only be able to take so much Tang as they go to Mars, but it DOES just beg for retro-Jetsons parodies and rest assured, it will wind up as fodder for our great grandchildren 90th edition of James Lileks' “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” once the art is perfected :-)
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