Food and water is essential for basic human life. Water is the most essential ingredient for life, and food is fuel for creating energy and surviving. Over the years, mankind has slowly perfected a healthy diet, consisting of fruit, carbs, proteins, and vegetables. All of these are grown on our planet naturally, and also being easily harvested/obtained. Most of these types of food cannot survive in the vacuum of space, which is why scientists had to alter the food, and even create a new way of forming food.

Ever since the first man was sent up into space, scientists have been working on the best way to preserve and grow food in space. They have found that the easiest way to preserve food is to freeze dry it, which essentially sucks all the air out of the product, which compacts it into a very small volume. This worked for decades, but now with the goal to reach Mars, which would take over three months, this is a problem. To have enough to supply enough food for the journey, NASA would have to stock up way too much food for the rockets to hold. Even if they found a way to do this, the food would not survive for long enough for the entirety of the trip. This leads to the need to design a new way to hold/stockpile food.

The solution to the problems would be to 3D print food from mixtures that the astronauts would create themselves from vitamins and pastes. This would create a whole new level of fine tuning food intake, and would allow scientists to use these specific mixtures to keep up their specific diet. The paste and vitamins themselves would not be perishable if they are not mixed together.

This creates a perfect world of food and nutrition for the astronauts to survive their trip to Mars, and even further places. The only problem with this is that the paste that was hypothesized cannot be replicated perfectly. All pastes that were created have not been successfully proven to be imperishable for a long time period. Although scientists have a good understanding on what they need to do to achieve the goal, this is easier said than done.