NASA’s Next 3D Printing Frontier Is… Pizza?

Forget guns, here’s a 3D printingdevelopment that can’t be overhypedand pretty much anyone with the munchies can get behind. NASA’s sinking a chunk of change into 3D printing food—starting with the humble pizza—in a new project aimed at evolving the future of food for both space and back here on Earth. It’s not quite a replicator, but it’s a start.

The idea is that you wouldn’t cook your food in the normal manner; you’d simply print it out from the basic ingredients such as oils, water and carbohydrate powders. The cartridges would have shelf lives of decades apparently, so it’ll be a bit like a new version of canning, I guess. Soundsdelicious.

Why is the project kicking off with pizza? Because of the multi-layered nature of the best fast food ever, whichshouldbe easier for the printer to produce as a first stab. Mind you, it should be able to spit out spaghetti pretty easily too, right?

I’m thinking this is likely to taste like stale cardboard, but hell, we’ve all had pizza that basically tasted like recycled paper at some point or other. Anyway, it’s the future of food apparently, until we get full-on replicators and can simply shout “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” that is. [QuartzviaSlashGear]