Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. If we're ever going
Speaker 1: to abandon this planet and live on Mars or wherever,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to have hamburgers. And A Russian
Speaker 1: cosnaught named Alex Grupochka has gotten humanity a little closer
Speaker 1: to that goal. On a recent trip to the International
Speaker 1: Space Station, he accomplished making real meat without killing an
Speaker 1: animal in space using a three D printer. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's nothing special about space that makes it more possible
Speaker 1: to three D print to hamburger. The scientists here on
Speaker 1: Earth have been doing it since the first Hamburger patty
Speaker 1: was printed in and the idea for lab grown meat
Speaker 1: was first patented back in by Villain van Ellen, who
Speaker 1: spent time in a Japanese prison camp during World War Two.
Speaker 1: Conditions for van Ellen and his fellow humans were bad enough,
Speaker 1: but he was so appalled by how the animals were
Speaker 1: treated that he made it his life's mission to make
Speaker 1: slaughtering animals a necessary in our food system. And since
Speaker 1: NASA and other space programs are looking for a sustainable
Speaker 1: way to feed astronauts as they pursue plans to send
Speaker 1: humans deeper into space than ever before. Three D printing
Speaker 1: seems like a great way to cut down on the
Speaker 1: sheer volume of food luggage that these long voyages will require.
Speaker 1: The hope is that future astronauts will just bring a
Speaker 1: few plant and animal cells with them in addition to
Speaker 1: a structure giving material called bioinc, and that they can
Speaker 1: feed this slurry into a three D printer and walla
Speaker 1: dinner is served. This is a great idea in everything,
Speaker 1: but researchers knew that need to tweak the process to
Speaker 1: work in the microgravity of space. Yeah of Riisler, a
Speaker 1: representative from a Left Farms, the Israeli food tech company
Speaker 1: in charge of the experiment, told space dot Com maturing
Speaker 1: of bioprinted organs and tissues and zero gravity proceeds much
Speaker 1: faster than an Earth gravity conditions. The tissue is being
Speaker 1: printed from all sides simultaneously, like making a snowball. While
Speaker 1: most other bioprinters cre at it layer by layer on Earth,
Speaker 1: the cells always fall downward. In zero gravity, they hang
Speaker 1: in space and interfere only with each other. Layer by
Speaker 1: layer printing in gravity requires a support structure. Printing in
Speaker 1: zero gravity allows tissue to be created only with cell
Speaker 1: material without any intermediate support. On September nineteen, a Left
Speaker 1: Farms gave screw Pochka a bunch of files of biopsied
Speaker 1: animal cells cow, rabbit, and fish, along with a specialized
Speaker 1: three D printer that does its job using the magnetic
Speaker 1: fields and microgravity and instructions to manufacture a few pieces
Speaker 1: of meat made from some muscle cells and bioinc And
Speaker 1: it worked. Screwpoca was able to make a few small
Speaker 1: pieces of each kind of animal tissue with the setup,
Speaker 1: which means, thank goodness, we won't have to take cows
Speaker 1: with us if we want to have cookouts on Mars.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jessupine Shields and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio's
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