Think for a moment about why you might actually have to be vegetarian on Mars—it's much more sustainable.
Want to be a Martian colonist? No problem. Wait a decade or two and you can be one of the first several thousand to do so, says space baron Elon Musk who, after all, "would like to die on Mars."
There may be a catch: If you go via the Musk empire, you might (maybe?) have to be a vegetarian. A few sites reblogged something from RT that Elon Musk refuted in a tweet (which he later deleted) about a "kale-eating overlord" Musk saying only vegetarians could go.
First, that seems awfully difficult. Second, Musk is a businessman and knows that, despite the many benefits to vegetarian diets, people who don't eat meat account for a smallish percentage of the population of the "advanced nations" he says he'd market Mars colonization to.
But! Think for a moment about why you might actually have to be vegetarian on Mars—it's much more sustainable. A colleague jokes that Mars isn't all that different from suburban Phoenix, but it'll have to be a heck of a lot more careful with the way it uses its resources. (This Hacker News thread is pretty entertaining for a trip down that rabbit hole, plus a few others.)
A little over a year ago now, PETA implored Musk to lobby for a vegan Mars. His official response?
"I'm a big fan of free choice for any future Martian colony. That said, it is likely that early Mars colonists would have a mostly vegetable diet, because of the energy and space needed to raise farm animals."
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Photo via Flickr (cc) user Martin Cathrae.
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