Martian food testing costs US taxpayers $947,000

Although your tax dollars are paying to develop a menu for humans to eat on Mars, no government study has (yet) been commissioned to study what a Martian (see above) might eat when one visits Earth. Mars may need women, (see below) but the US government t. is spending millions trying to figure out what they will eat once they get to the Red Planet.

Because the people in government who spend tax money are removed from earning it, it spends like water, something which do not exist on Mars.

You probably didn’t know this, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Advanced Food Technology Project has developed a recipe for pizza and 100 other foods that could be served on Mars.

NASA no longer has a manned spaced fleet and no current plans for human space flight to Mars, but some are hopeful a trip could possibly be taken by the mid-2030s.

NASA spends about $1 million annually “researching and building the Mars menu.” This year, NASA awarded $947,000 to researchers at Cornell University and the University of Hawaii to study the best food for astronauts to eat on Mars.

Six volunteers will head into a barren landscape in Hawaii to simulate a 120-day Mars mission. In exchange, they receive an all-expenses-paid trip, plus $5,000 each for performing the activities Mars explorers might do, including wearing space suits and taking “Navy showers,” in order to see how different foods might affect their moods and health.

Preparing meals on Mars, however, offers new culinary opportunities. In space, “the lack of gravity means smell — and taste — is impaired. So the food is bland,” said one NASA expert. But because gravity does exist on Mars, astronauts would be able to “chop vegetables and do a little cooking of their own.”

All the recipes developed so far are “vegetarian because the astronauts will not have dairy or meat products available. It isn’t possible to preserve those products long enough to take to Mars — and bringing a cow on the mission is not an option,” according to the senior research scientist at Lockheed Martin leading a team of three who are building the Martian menu.