MISSION
The Menu for Mars Supper Club is pioneering a menu for life on Mars. We research, prototype, and taste-test a menu for the Red Planet that is nutritious, sustainable, and considers our cultural relationships to food. We are group of artists, scientists, gardeners, and concerned citizens who are augmenting government and private research.
Events
Washington Project for the Arts: January 9 - February 20th, 2016
Join us for dinner: February 6th, 2015
Menu For Mars will be in Washington DC to report on our progress prototyping foods for the first year of human colonization of Mars. Join us on Saturday the 6th for a very special Mars-feasible Ethiopian dinner. For information joining the dinner, visit WPADC.org.
Will the conditions on Mars affect the menu?
The first food on Mars will be sent from Earth: dried, powdered, or thermostabilized. Fresh food will be scarce. Crops will need to be hardy and adaptable to survive the cold, radiation, lower gravity with very little water, and long seasons—even within their greenhouse environment. Mars has a lot of dust and might smell and taste like peroxide, which will get into the food. Will we make new eating rituals to remove dust and create flavors to complement or mask the taste?
Will our cultural relationships to food and eating change?
Life on Mars will be a life indoors, like a camping trip in the fuselage of an airplane—for the rest of your life. How will cultural food traditions that have been forged from local environments and their ingredients migrate to a barren and hostile landscape? Will traditions transform or will we simply create new ones?
Can life on Mars ever be sustainable?
Water and organic material will be extremely precious—nothing can be wasted. How will food and water be used efficiently before being reused, and composted? Will we need to create and preserve an Earth-like organic matter bubble to survive?