Food from Hydrogen-Fed Single Cell Protein

The purpose of the project “Food from Hydrogen-Fed Single Cell Protein” is to analyze the possibility of providing food in space/moon/Mars or in the event of a global catastrophe such as abrupt climate change or asteroid impact. The basic technology is using electricity to split water into hydrogen and having microbes grow on the hydrogen. This is currently being done by the company “Solar Foods” and they will support this project. This project aligns with several of NASA’s strategic goals. The project first allows for the achievement of Goal 2: The extension of “Human Presence Deeper into Space and to the Moon for Sustainable Long-Term Exploration and Utilization” and Goal 4: the optimization of “Capabilities and Operations” by allowing for increased time in space via the aforementioned efficiently-produced food. By increasing the viable time in space, there is potential to further achieve Goal 1: the expansion of “Human Knowledge through New Scientific Discoveries” by allowing for its sub-objective of conducting “Human Exploration in Deep Space, Including to the Surface of the Moon” as this project can allow for the production of food for deep space and lunar exploration. Specifically, the project will estimate the efficiency and cost of this food source in extraterrestrial applications. The project will also investigate how many people could be fed as a function of time in a catastrophe and at what approximate cost. These will involve a synthesis of the literature on hydrogen consuming microbes, working with data from Solar Foods, and leveraging other investigations of rapidly scaling up food sources in catastrophes. Anticipated results include feeding a significant fraction of the global population within one year of the catastrophe. I expect the cost of extraterrestrial applications to be significantly lower than using electricity to produce light and then growing food with photosynthesis because of the much greater efficiency of hydrogen microbes.