What would it take to feed a million people on Mars?

While Elon Musk's engineers determine how we're all going to Mars, some of us want to know what we're going to eat when we get there.

The first inhabitants of the red planet will probably have to import most (if not all) of their food from the Earth, and it is probably safe to say that they will not eat cheeseburgers.

In a new article, planetary scientists from the University of Central Florida explored what would be on the menu for a million Martian inhabitants and discussed the logistics of their diet. Their study, published in New space, found that it would take 100 years for such a food system to become self-sustaining and that, in the meantime, people have to carry a huge amount of food from the Earth.

Musk's SpaceX plans to launch missions to Mars as early as 2024 in the hope that people will colonize the planet. Producing food on Mars would be necessary to help people who live there permanently, but plants can not be grown outside on the planet. The products could potentially be grown in tunnels, but people would have to build 14,500 kilometers of tunnel sections to be able to stock enough products to feed a million people, according to the report.

The paper found that farm animals on Mars will not occur sooner either because of the impossibility of transporting them in space. But possible alternatives could include insect farming and cell farming, which consists of producing protein-based foods in a laboratory.

The scientists who drafted the paper built a computer model to calculate the food needs of people living on Mars if the population reached one million people. The model, based on calorie requirements and land requirements, revealed that if no food was produced locally, it would take more than 194,000 transport ships to bring food from the Earth for the first 100 years . If the products were grown locally, it would take more than 50,000 ships to import packaged food, until the new civilization becomes self-sustaining.

Scientists at Washington State University recently announced in a separate study that they have found a way to extend the shelf life of macaroni and cheese up to three years. Since it takes about seven months to get to Mars, this could be a good option for those who do not want to eat insects.