From: henry@spsystems.net   
      
   In article ,   
   Herman Rubin  wrote:   
   >There is another problem, which is much more serious than   
   >it might appear.  If we reduce the food supply to those   
   >nutrients about which we know, we may end up missing   
   >something important over moderately long periods.   
      
   Except, of course, that's not what anyone is proposing.  The only way you   
   *could* do that would be chemical synthesis of food, which is out of the   
   question.  Realistic proposals all involve preserved normal foods, and the   
   only significant question is whether absolutely everything of importance   
   survives preservation.   
      
   And as has already been noted, anything that will survive freezing *will*   
   survive essentially indefinitely in cryogenic refrigeration.  So there   
   should be no difficulty with anything that's needed only in trace amounts,   
   given a modest amount of frozen whole food as a supplement to dehydrated   
   stuff.   
      
   People have lived on such diets -- in fact, on diets considerably inferior   
   to that -- for periods of a year or more in places like the polar regions.   
   Extending this to Mars-mission durations would require some confirming   
   experiments to be absolutely certain, but major trouble is most unlikely.   
   --   
   "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer   
                                   -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)