Could a NASA-funded 3-D food printer help end world hunger?

In Star Trek: 
The Next Generation, we were introduced to food replicators: devices capable of fiddling with reality at the subatomic level to reproduce everything edible, from steaks to snacks to steaming cups of tea. In reality, such fanciful devices — based on the show’s equally far-fetched transporter technology — probably couldn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean something like 3D food printing might not (eventually) get the job done just as effectively.

(MORE: Why Argentine Steaks Are Getting Harder to Find)

We may need food-printing technology relatively soon. Several multibillion-dollar mission-to-Mars projects are in the works, including Mars One, to which some 78,000 people recently applied. The estimated arrival date of the first colonists on that mission is 2023, barely a decade from now. Imagine having to plan that menu; the trip alone could take seven months, after which you’re essentially stuck on the planet indefinitely, subsisting on what you brought along or supplies fired planet-to-planet like some sort of deep-space feeding tube.....[...]

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