hydroponics & mycology
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Fungi break things down to a condition where they ’ re suitable to compost . In a sense , it ’ s sort of like pre-composting a product before it hits the actual compost pile .”
There are other advantages . “ Animals in space are complex , less precise , less predictable , and take up a lot of room . With plants in a spaceship , you have to generate energy to create light for photosynthesis . But you don ’ t need that with mushrooms — just an LED bulb and you can create protein in a culture that has only one living thing in it .”
In another futuristic move , Pryor and colleagues are developing automated growing and harvesting systems to be fitted into interplanetary space vehicles . And it goes beyond even that . “ Once these modular food systems have been developed , they can be put anywhere — in deserts , in the middle of a prairie , on ocean islands , we can even put them underwater off the continental shelf — another example of where developments in the space program have spun off potential for all kinds of improvements for life across the planet . Lunar greenhouses with mushrooms can be put in Antarctica , on Mount Everest , or sunk down into the oceans because the continental shelf is an untapped resource .”
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