3D Food Printer: Beam Me a Pizza Please.

Food on long-haul space flights needs to meet a slew of requirements. It needs to have a five-year shelf life, perhaps most importantly. But there are other issues it needs to address. “This is the only food that the crew members will have, so it needs to maintain its nutrition content for the length of the mission, and it has to be acceptable.

3-D printed food is one of a handful of options that NASA is looking at. 3-D food printers are looking at providing powdered forms of ingredients, and these would not be processed ahead. Processed food has more nutrients, and it’s tastier. It also allows for even more options than what’s available today. Pizza is one of the comfort foods unavailable to astronauts on current missions;  A 3-D food printer could change that. And since the 3-D printer does most of the work, astronauts wouldn’t have to deal with extensive food prep.  

There’s one big hitch, though: 3-D printing probably wouldn’t work so well in microgravity (remember: things fly around). It would likely be more useful in surface missions, where gravity isn’t as much of an issue.

NASA is also exploring other processing technologies outside of the 3-D printing realm. High-pressure processing, which uses high pressures with a low-heat treatment to sterilize foods, is one option. Another is microwave sterilization–a process that uses high-heat treatments for a shorter period of time.The issue with those two processes is that we use high-barrier packaging, and it’s not compatible. Even if you end up with higher-quality food, we don’t have packaging that will keep that higher quality.

BEYOND OUTER SPACE

With the anticipated world population of 12 Billion by the end of the century, the current infrastructure of food production and supply will not be able to meet the demand of such a large population. The conventional technologies can only provide marginal efficiency, which is not enough in keeping food prices at affordable level for the population growth. By exploring and implementing technologies such as 3-D printing, this may avoid food shortage, inflation, starvation, famine and even food wars. In addition, US military can use 3-D printed food system during many of their missions.

Powdered food is rarely as tasty as fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats, but food production shortages change what people are willing to tolerate. Before we can even think what a future of 3-D printed food will look like a fully formed product–and that will take awhile. NASA has accepted a proposal for a phase I feasibility study, and if that works out, there will be more studies ahead.