Colonizing Mars: The Absurdity of Cows in Space

The Case for Clean Proteins in Space Exploration

Transporting cattle and water to space is highly inefficient and cost prohibitive. Without vast amounts of water, meat can not be grown in traditional agricultural practices. Astronauts need about one gallon of water a day. It costs about $83K to lift one gallon of water into space. Because of this, US Astronauts on the ISS currently recycle their urine and water runoff.?

The trip from Earth to Mars will take 3 years. A study from 2020 concluded it would take 110 people to start a self sustaining population. One 800 lb heifer will feed 4 adults 2-3 times a week for a year, equalling 28 cows. A 600 lb feeder cow consumes 6 gallons of water a day at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, water will be crucial for all industries required to establish colonization and full grown cows will consume their body weight in water per year. To continue to have cattle, you will have to breed cows, a 1200 lb pregnant cow will consume around 24 lbs of feed a day. Due to hay wastage it will increase to 30 lbs a day. Growing hay is very water intensive. Transporting it would be inefficient due to the large quantities required and time delay between shipments.?

Transporting 28 heifers each weighing 600 lb involves moving 16,800 lb of cattle, but the real challenge is their feed and water requirements over the three year trip from Earth to Mars. Each heifer consumes 30 lb of hay daily, 919,800 lb in three years. Likewise, they need a total of 168 gallons of water daily—over 1,095 days, that’s 183,960 gallons weighing about 183,960×8.34 (weight of 1 gallon)=1,534,226 lb. Adding it all up (cattle + hay + water) results in roughly 2.47 million pounds of cargo.

For context, the Saturn V rocket could launch about 308,000 lb into Low Earth Orbit, and today’s largest potential designs aim for around 200,000–330,000 lb. In contrast, these 2.47 million pounds of supplies and animals far surpass not only single-launch capacities but even exceed the total mass of the entire International Space Station, which ranges between 900,000 to 1,000,000 lb. Consequently, sending 28 fully provisioned cattle into space for three years is technologically and logistically unfeasible with current or near-future rocket systems. In addition, as of February 2024, Falcon 9 launches cost approximately $60–70 million per launch.

As we enter into long duration space missions, transporting cattle will be futile and cost prohibitive due to their weight. However, animal proteins, rich in sulfur-containing amino acids, can contribute to bone resorption in micro-gravity, which is crucial for astronaut health, this makes protein selection essential. The only option will be clean proteins.

Clean proteins are food ingredients created to replace or complement conventional animal-derived proteins. They include plant-based proteins, cell-based meat, precision fermentation and molecular farming—each leveraging different technologies to produce sustainable, scalable, and functionally equivalent protein sources. Clean proteins will be the cheaper and faster option. If you believe in space travel, then we have to prioritize funding clean proteins. Long term space travel will require clean proteins.

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