Space vacuum food preservation
In a world I am creating, some people have colonized Ceres-like and Moon-like worlds - that is, they live in domes or underground, in pressurized buildings. The planets have no atmosphere for all practical purposes.
I am now working on such people's cultures, and I'm considering food. Would it be possible to use the vacuum of space to prepare, or at least conserve food?
What I imagine is exposing vegetables to the vacuum of space to dehydrate and freeze them at the same time. One could expose milk to vacuum to remove its water content and get condensed milk. Airlocks could double as cattle slaughtering devices - kill and freeze the meat in one go.
I'm also thinking that all that UV could help kill microbes, if the cold didn't already. Otherwise if radioactivity is an issue, food could be exposed to vacuum underground or in the shade of a hill or mountain.
Would this be feasible, or is it just another ignobel waiting for us to colonize space before it happens?
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1 answer
In the book The Martian, the main character accidentally freeze-dries his entire potato crop after an atmospheric breach. This is an author who did meticulous research. The potatoes were completely fine, just not as tasty and they could no longer grow and divide.
I'd say freeze drying using the non-atmosphere is an excellent way to prep food for long-term storage.
But as slaughter? No. Aside from the extreme cruelty, you will end up with a hard dry and large dead animal. How will you clean, skin, and gut it? Even a small animal like a bird would be problematic. It would turn soggy when reconstituted. Even fish need to be gutted. For a large animal, gads. But you could do crickets.
The water loss issue L.Dutch brings up may or may not be a problem. Again, using The Martian as a source, water and oxygen were not issues at all, with the machinery the character had available. But this could vary based on the location and the tech, as well as the total needs (in The Martian there was tech for an entire team of people but he was alone).
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