The next step up from
hydroponics is the orbital space farm, as envisaged by artist Frank
Tinsley in 1954. The great coils you see in the giant dish
contain chlorella
algae;
the wonder food of Future Past that was, along with yeast, supposed to
replace bread as the staple of all mankind.
Back in the 1950s, this didn't
seem like such a crazy idea. On paper, chlorella looked like a
winner. Not only was the microorganism 50 percent protein with
the complete set of amino acids, but it was also chock full of
calories, fats and vitamins. Furthermore, all you needed
to grow it was sunshine, water and carbon dioxide. And it grew
in incredible quantities with one pilot plant projecting yields of 40
tons of dry weight protein per acre. At this rate, a farm the
size of Rhode Island would feed the entire planet and cultivating one
fifth of the Earth's surface would not only provide food, but all of
the fuels needed for every major industry on the planet. All
that needed to be overcome were "minor technical difficulties."
Unfortunately, those "minor"
difficulties turned out to be not so minor in practice.
Chlorella turned out to be very easy to cultivate in small ponds, but
scaling up production to that of a major crop revealed that the algae
was very sensitive to heat, bacterial contamination, light and a whole
range of other factors. Worse, the algae itself was indigestible
unless it's hard cell walls were broken up by further processing,
which brought the costs up to $1.00 a pound at a time when soy flour
was going for $0.06 a pound.
This isn't even to mention that most algae, like most microbial
foodstuffs, have a real problem with high quantities of certain
nucleic acids that make them unfit to be eaten in large quantities,
which is why chlorella and it's related algae spirulina is found
mostly in health food supplements today.
Oh, and there was also that tiny
problem of algae being what even it's supporters described as "a
nauseating slime," which tends to instill consumer resistance in
everyone except the French.
But none of this explains the
greatest unanswered mystery of the space farm idea; what the devil was
the point of putting the blasted farm in orbit in the first place?!?!?!?!?
