There will be no bacon on Elon Musk's Mars. UPDATE:Elon Musk would like you to know that he is not trying to be the Emperor of Mars and has no authority to ban meat there. (Thanks Carl Franzen!)

  • franko

    whoohoo! my chances just increased. now i just need to scrape up $500,000
    :

  • http://bodly.com/blog bodly

    Guess I won’t be going to Mars.

  • soylent_plaid

    Careful Elon, we all know what happens when you mix Mars and seitan.

  • http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing

    Interesting.  As self-indulgent as it first sounds, it makes sense if you consider how expensive meat really is.
    Transporting it would cost a fortune (by mass alone, not to mention care if you want to bring it there alive).  Also, even if you could afford to bring it there alive (maybe a few hundred chickens for breeding), meat is a very expensive and inefficient medium through which to get your energy.  It adds another layer of lost energy, water, etc.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      Yup. I think this is funny because it’s kind of being framed as “Boy, Elon Musk sure hates meat!”, when it’s really just logical (even to someone like me who loves bacon). Meat requires more resources to produce than plant-based food. When your resources are super limited … 

      • http://amorphia-apparel.com/ Jeremy Kalgreen

        Exactly, I’ve seen a lot of commenters that don’t seem to get that there are perfectly good reasons for this completely divorced from ideology or judgment.  

  • Chuck

    Is this an indicator of what kind of dark kingdom is going to be established on Mars?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eovuIfeH2k4

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    Of course, there WILL be a source of meat on Mars even if no one brings livestock.

    • Jake0748

       Soylent green!

      • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

        Dissolving good red meat into crackers would be a terrible waste.

        I’m talking To Serve Man, Hellas Basin Edition.

        All those vegetables . . . well, you need them to boil along with the bones for soup stock, right?

    • http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing

       MMmmhmhmhmmm… Soylent Green….

      • franko

        “To Serve Man”

        • James Kimbell

          “They’re Made Out of Meat”

  • timquinn

    Trying to appeal to the porcine expatriate crowd. 

  • crankypage

    Maggie – current leader, Headline of the Year. Beautiful.

  • TheOven

    Until we learn to grow it in vats.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    Also:

    No pets.

    No lying on the grass under open skies on a warm summer day.

    No standing on the beach and seeing a seal bobbing up and down in the waves staring back at you.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      No Swedish Fish (probably). 

      No slightly stale Cadbury Cream Eggs. 

      Really, you can pretty much write off the entire Candy Hierarchy. 

      • ldobe

        You can drink glucose straight from the IV bags. It’s not half bad. It’s not candy necessarily, but it’s edible and sweet, and probably would be on a Mars bound ship.

        • http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

           Why wouldn’t you just transport solid glucose, fructose or sucrose? Seems kind of silly to mix it with water and then package it in little bags.

          • ldobe

            Yours makes more sense. I just know that any ship to Mars would have medical supplies, and in the hospitals I’ve done IT work for, they keep glucose solution in 1liter IV bags just stored in closets all over the place.

            It was premixed (I assume it’s better for emergencies that way). I suppose on a spaceship, you’d want to save the mass and volume.

      • bcsizemo

        No slightly stale Cadbury Cream Eggs.

        As long as the chocolate shell is intact and kept at a fairly stable temperature and humidity they keep for a fairly long time.

        I’m still eatting on some Cadbury “Scream” Eggs from Halloween….

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Somebody will smuggle a ferret.  Everybody knows that ferret owners don’t have to obey the rules.

  • http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

    What would the pigs eat?  Scrub Holum ?

  • rodstewart

    But what happens when David Lister smuggles a cat into his quarters inside of the mining complex in which he is employed?