Former FD man works on food machine for NASA

A former Fort Dodge man is trying to perfect a machine that may someday help feed astronauts on Mars and starving people around the globe.

Scott Fortune, who now lives in Cresco, has a prototype device in his machine shop that reduces soybeans and peanuts to oil and an edible substance. The ultimate goal is to shrink it to one the size of a pair of staplers that can make six pounds of food and oil in an hour.

''The whole project is about finding alternative ways to feed people whether they're on Mars or on Earth,'' he said. ''The emphasis started on feeding astronauts, but the implications are even greater here on Earth.''

Fortune, who worked for 20 years in the local gypsum industry, said this effort is the largest engineering project he's been involved in.

He landed in the midst of the project after working for Celotex, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Smithway Motor Xpress. When he left Fort Dodge in 2003, he went to work for Triple F Inc., a Des Moines company involved in the food machine job. When that company got into financial trouble, Fortune bought Upper Iowa Tool and Die in Cresco, which was doing all the metal work for the project. He purchased that company in November 2007.

Since putting astronauts on Mars is the next big goal for NASA, scientists for the space agency and Purdue University are seeking a way to feed them. Packing a lunch on the spaceship isn't possible because the trip to the red planet will take six months.

Fortune said the spacecraft would carry enough food for the voyage to Mars and the return to Earth. But the astronauts will have to grow their own food during the months they're on the red planet.

''Once they arrive on the planet, they have to become self-sufficient,'' he said.

He said current plans call for the astronauts to raise soybeans and peanuts in special greenhouses.

The machine Fortune is working on would be used after those crops are harvested.

He said the astronauts will put the beans or peanuts in the machine. After processing is completed, oil and a paste-like substance will be discharged.

The solid substance, which Fortune said would have the consistency of oatmeal forced through a tube, would be edible by itself. It could also be mixed with other ingredients to make a meal.

That process could have benefits much closer to home than Mars.

Fortune said the machine could eventually churn out food for people in Third World countries where starvation is always a threat.

''This has the ability to help people feed themselves,'' he said.

Fortune noted that the device intended to produce more food for people is being developed in Cresco, the hometown of Norman Borlaug, the scientist who created high yield varieties of rice and other crops that are credited with averting starvation for millions across the world.