As the current frontier of humanity in space, the International Space Station is heavily reliant on Earth not only for fresh supplies but also as a garbage disposal service for the various types of waste produced on the ISS by its human occupants. As future manned missions take humans further away from Earth, finding ways to reprocess this waste rather than chucking it out of the nearest airlock becomes a priority. One suggested solution comes from a Polish company, Astronika, with their insect bioreactor that can process organic material into useful biomass.
Interestingly, the cockroach species picked was the Madagascar hissing cockroach, one of the largest (5 – 7.5 cm) species. This is also a cockroach species which is often kept as a pet. In this closed-loop bioreactor that Astronika has developed, these cockroaches would chew their way through up to 3.6 kg of waste per week in the large version, with the adult cockroaches presumably getting turned into fresh chow and various materials at some point. Beyond the irrational ‘yuck’ factor that comes with eating insect protein, one of the biggest issues we can see with this system is that the long-duration mission crew may get attached to the cockroaches, as they are rather cute.
Joking aside, even if a final version of such a bioreactor ends up using far less cute bacteria and kin, the idea to recycle as much human biowaste as possible is a crucial step towards making remote space stations and long-duration space travel possible. A small version of this bioreactor will be sent up to the ISS, where the principle would get its first shot at showing off its space legs.
For some reason, cockroaches and NASA seem inextricably linked. We remembered that the Madagascar cockroaches apparently make pretty good robotics platforms if you are a deft hand at roach surgery.
Pick a different insect and maybe. The only way cockroaches could ever factor into my diet is if they’re fed to fish that I then ate though. I’d rather fatten up before liftoff and just not eat at all for six weeks than eat roaches.
I think astronauts are pretty dedicatated people in general, and sacrifice a huge amount to be in space.
I suspect most will be able to overcome the idea of eating ‘roaches or perhaps are not cut out for space as it currently stands.
you will live in the pod, you will eat the bugs, you will own nothing and be happy. at least until they get out, get sucked into the co2 scrubbers, clog them and suffocate the crew. can you imagine if one got into your space suit?
You will eat the bugs Mr. Bond
I will not eat the bugs
You already eating them. XD
I was thinking terrestrial isopods, I raise both isopods and Madagascar cockroaches and between the two the isopods break down and breed faster and live in the same environment.
Interesting, could you tell me more?
Do you grow them for recreation or as a part of your job?
i wouldnt mind having a giant isopod as a pet. i would name him podrich.
you vill eat ze bugs (in space)
Sorry I couldn’t help it.
The idea of bioreactors with live animals seems kinda silly, that we have no better way of handling solid waste than to make it the animal’s food insect. Honestly, silly or not, its still probably the easiest way of dealing with it.
I’m also intrigued by bottle gardens. I wish there were ones with actual grasshoppers and small insects. They could be a very, very cool way to study or even directly affect evolution (since you can control literally every single thing about the ecosystem!)
Better there than on Earth!
Aaaaand the comments are gone.
Ze comments, zhey are curiously in und Germanoid Swiss accent… zhis is very curious, ja?
You’d have to slaughter them
for food. Which astronaut is going to want to do that?
So you’ll have to automate the harvesting, along with the cleaning of the carcasses. But then you’ll need replacement cockroaches. So there needs to be mating going on and birthing and rearing – the full life cycle.
It’s much much more involved than just a bunch of cockroaches in a tub.
Snowpiercer!
The future of space travel will heavily depend on recycling everything with a biomass. Unlike [Failure is not an Option] from the 60 years ago: [Throwing away may not be an option] in future missions.
I know we’re all touchy about comments this week, but my comment (simply read “Snowpiercer!”) is perfectly relevant. So I’ll try again.
Or are comments being censored randomly by an ambivalent AI? Or a hamster?
Oh dear. I must be on a blacklist.
Oh. I’m not. Something’s definitely screwy.
Lately you need a couple dozen of whiles to do processing to display comments
I’d be better with it if the output was a protein cube instead of a live or whole cockroach. Just add a mechanism which only let the largest roaches through, put a little sign over the hole( “utopia awaits”) and once the door shuts behind it and there are enough roach friends in the room, start the grinder and evaporator and make the cube.
I don’t want to eat any bug that’s been eating poop.
How do you feel about shrimp?
Kinda gross honestly. Crawdad boils are awful, most overrated thing ever
And comes the other question, right after this comment: Who’s is going to eat the poop the bug is making? Will it be crunched with the rest, or will the bug requires to starve before it’s crunched ?
A fascinating idea though I suspect insects are too complex to be the most ideal in the waste reprocessing and food source roles in their own right. But I’m curious as to how this plays out, it may be that being a higher order lifeform than the other candidates means they turn out to manage themselves with less outside intervention.
Though I suspect there will not be any single best solution anyway – when in effect the eventual goal is to create a whole biome of recycling or at least a good facsimile of one and you don’t have centuries of selective breeding or gene editing to make the plant/fungi/critter you are using match the requirements you probably need to round up a collection of natures finest recyclers with different specialities – at which point it may actually be better for the people to just have a garden of sorts as gardens are relaxing etc.
Also I don’t get why so many people are so bothered by insects myself. Though I have never intentionally tried any, as far as I recall anyway…
Human -> feces -> cockroach -> chicken – human -> feces Everybody is happy.
Don’t forget about the chicken feces. That’ll go to fertilize the vegetable gardens.
And the oxygen gardens
Has anyone mentioned “Snowpiercer” yet?
I’ve seen youtube videos of places infested with roaches.
I’ve had to clean apartments that had roaches.
The smell is one thing you’ll not forget soon.
The last thing I ever would want to do is eat them.
Why couldn’t they be used to generate energy?
By “generate energy” do you mean powering a human?
He probably meant have them run on little hamster wheels to turn a dynamo.
there was talk about autonomous robots that could derive electricity from digesting meat. i think it was classified because of a danger it would be weaponized. i saw it in newscientist magazine.
Yah well in my next life as technician on an intergalactic space liner….. I ain’t cleaning that thing or doing maintenance, elon musk’s AIs can do that …. lol
I think earth worms might be a better option, especially if you dehydrated the waste first.
I kept rabbits for a while. The waste they produced was some of the best compost I’ve ever made. If they were ONLY used for compost they would pay for themselves. Anyways, when I started the rabbit poop compost pile I dug up a hand full of night crawlers (worms) and tossed them in. A year later I was finding foot long worms when I turned the pile. I am not exaggerating.
The truly black dirt they made was like rocket fuel for plants. Four medium sized rabbits produced a lot of waste but once the worms were established the pile was easy to maintain. Wound up giving away cubic yards of fertilizer to friends because I ran out of garden to put it in.
If the astronauts were on a strictly plant based diet the worm processed waste could be used in plant cultivation. I’ve seen some interesting hybrid hydroponic-dirt growing setups that could utilize vermicast (worm poop).
The world needs Biosphere 2, but can’t get over the idea that it “failed” because we couldn’t seal humans in indefinitely on the first try.
It is and always was an ongoing experiment where problems are expected to arise so that they can be studied.
Yeah the giving up on that crap was pretty pathetic. Also it should simply be part of the contract that it will be potentially dangerous and force them to subsist until medics are needed to go in and revive them. And keep the hippies away from it
It wasn’t due to a lack of will, the designers had failed their basic chemistry and didn’t allow the system to run on an open cycle long enough to finish outgassing. TBH, if someone were to go through and reactivate the project with a direct eye towards a solar-powered closed system, rather than an amusement park recreation of Earthly ecosystems, it would probably be fine now.
I’m not saying “make it all like THX-1138”, the multifunction garden areas would still play a big role as material buffers, recycling systems, and human comfort items – but the space for them would need to be used to produce a robust semi-closed loop life support system out of cooperating species.
Dumbest idea ever, if they escape, and they will, they will cause a lot of damage eventually.
Roaches are pretty easy to keep confined – many species can’t climb plastic or glass. So, select the species well, there will be no issues. Mealworms are probably better though, as that process can be almost completely automated with nearly no need for human work.
As far as I know, very few things are easy to keep confined in microgravity. You’re probably right if you’re talking about a planetary base, but a big use-case for the foreseeable future will be microgravity either in a station or during the coasting phase of a spaceflight. Roach frass and residue (i.e. microfragments of chitin and other substances) will probably be a pretty big issue requiring some degree of isolation from the main crew life support system.
I could see astronauts quickly developing a lifelong allergy to roach secretions almost as soon as their sinuses adapt to microgravity. This is completely unacceptable, though for somewhat disturbing reasons. Scientists to work extensively with cockroaches on Earth develop allergies which impact their ability to enjoy coffee, of all things. There is apparently enough roach tissue in ground and roasted coffees to trigger an allergic reaction.
Even if we convince the spacemen to eat the bugs, I don’t think we’ll be able to get them to give up coffee for the rest of their lives.
All this is annoying because some kind of insect would probably make a pretty good waypoint in a closed-loop life support system in processing difficult-to-recycle wastes into feedstocks for other processes. But, in spite of everything, we are not technologically ready to do this sort of thing yet. We have a lot of basic research to do.
Good Job(bie)!
To minimize biowaste you’d probably want a full, bespoke ecosystem, not just roaches. I would love to be an ecosystem designer.
I think this will be a serious issue, not so much because the ‘roaches are cute but because of the lonliness and lack of non-human interaction (well so far…) in space.
In terms of bioreactors chickens are very popular in that they eat scraps and produce eggs all over the globe. Eventually you can eat the chicken too.
But isn’t the bigger issue that does the ISS really produce that much waste? We can’t feed the ‘roaches human waste (well at least not without removing any possibile of transmission of microbes). So what would the ‘roaches actually eat? There’s no watermelon rinds, chicken bones etc on the ISS.
Add the waste to their neutron shielding. The poo barrier will provide a welcome attenuation of cosmic rays as they get further from the sun.
These comments make it look like a marketing problem.
Feed me roaches, but don’t tell me it’s roaches. Works for fast food. I don’t know what’s in it, but I still eat it.
What happen to the 5th element remote controlled roaches?
Kirk: Mr Spock I know you said these new replicators were more efficient but I think there’s something wrong
Zoom to a picture of a bun with an insect leg sticking out
Pigs have been historically used to recycle outhouse waste to recycle back to food. Allegedly, old timers thought the pork tasted better raised on that diet compared to grain. More appetizing than roaches and probably more nutritious (nutrition is more complicated than what’s printed on boxes), if less convenient.
Yeah, this is just the first incremental step toward end goal of Soylent Green