NASA has awarded a grant for a prototype 3D food printer to mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor, who plans to start his project by attempting to 3D print pizza.
The preceding sentence may be one of the greatest of all time but the six month grant, for the sum of $125,000, isn’t for what immediately springs to mind. The food printer has some nobler aims than allowing users to print out takeaway dishes at will, it is intended to be used on long-distance space travel missions to provide astronauts with food and also could be utilised to feed families around the world when food becomes even more scarce than it is now.
But, back to the pizza. The meal won’t take quite the same form as something from a Debonairs thanks to the way that ingredients would have to be preserved for extended spacefaring. The pizza base will apparently be printed and cooked at the same time before having a tomato base, comprising tomato powder, water and oil, applied before a “protein layer” is added to the top of the dish. Sounds… delicious… but it’s a start.
Source: The Verge