Making Future Moon Rovers Good Enough to Eat?

Oct. 26, 2005 — -- Someday humans will almost surely return to the moon and race across its bleak landscape in sophisticated lunar rovers. But what will they do with those expensive vehicles when they're through?

If Walter Smith has his way, they'll probably eat them.

Future space expeditions could be enhanced, he says, if we could make at least some of the stuff we'll need to get us there and back out of edible materials.

Dashboards out of Fiber One breakfast cereal? Tires out of chocolate? Rocket fuel out of beans?

He's kidding, of course. Up to a point.

Smith is a professor at Ball State University in Indiana who specializes in teaching future teachers about science. For several years now he has been involved in international projects designed to get children, and educators, to think out of the box. Really out.

Now he's working on an "edible lunar vehicle," with help from his college students at Ball State, and elementary students in Australia. The students are building small models of lunar excursion vehicles, and chances are they're going to pay close attention to just what goes into them. When it's all over, they've got to eat them.

"It's a whole lot of fun," says Smith, and the idea may not be quite as wild as it seems. It's a long ways to the moon, and it takes a lot of energy to carry even small payloads that far, so any waste that can be eliminated is a step in the right direction.

"If instead of leaving our space junk behind we could consume it before we left, hey, that takes care of a lot of problems," he says.

But for now, he's thinking small. Sixth-grade students in Sandy Davey's class at Toowong State School near Brisbane, Queensland, are already building model rovers out of edible materials. Smith's students are also working on models. All the participants will get together on a video conference in a few days.

"The working model will probably be made from fruit or a breakfast cereal, while the wheels will be made from lollipops," Smith says.