Just like Mama used to make. That is if your Mama was Rosie the robot from The Jetsons.
QZ.com is reporting that NASA is funding research into a 3D food printer. Anjan Contractor is a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Systems and Materials Research Corporation in Austin,TX. He has received a $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype for the world’s first food synthesizer.
Contractor, who has a background in 3D printing, was given this initial grant from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. His assignment was to create a system that can print food for astronauts on very super long missions. And his first food? Pizza, of couse. Christopher Mims with QZ.com explains:
Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.
Finally, the pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could come from any source, including animals, milk or plants.
Check out the prototype below: