Food production on Space stations (and ships!)

[PsiTraveller]

I am looking at the Agricultural plant production numbers. At TL 13+ the output is tripled (Highguard pg 61). Agricultural plants produce 1 ton per 20 tons of plant (upgraded to 3 tons per 20 tons), per day. Am I getting the numbers right?

These are displacement tons, so 20 displacement tons, or 280 m3 produces 42 m3 of food per day. I am thinking either protein bars of vat grown food. I do not think there is any other way of getting this level of production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ol2WJIoE0A

The freelance traveller site has an excellent article on it here: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/culture/reference/shuluum.html

The issue I see for a space station production operation is the need for 42 m3 per day worth of inputs. Handwaving drone collection units for CHON building block elements solves it, but 42 m3 per day of protein bars feeds a lot of people. Even if you have to spend money on the advertising jingle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unwd1MPNzic


Soylent Green for everyone!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

It's a factory, not a farm. It would still need raw materials, aka food, to turn into packaged food. I guess.

 

[phavoc]

I haven't looked at the numbers, but there's been a lot of advancement in vertical farming. Though the crops they are growing aren't things like watermelon, or corn, each of which needs a great deal more room than normal.

In the original Piper Space Vikings books there was the idea of carniculture vats that allowed you to 'grow' meat. Very important when spacecraft travelled potentially for months in hyperspace.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well the Goods produced chart on page 61 has Live Animals being produced from Agricultural plants. What packaging is done to them? I could see a mass production of cloned chicken or other futuristic chicken substitute. The common consumables and luxury consumables also list agricultural plants as the needed tech. If it is just a packaging system, then the question remains as to how to make a lot of food with chemical inputs. Can we come up with a rules consistent method of mass food production.

I like the idea of vat grown food production using chemical synthesis myself. It removes a lot of issues for planets trying to feed themselves. Shuluum technology explains how the masses are fed. Carniculture and vat grown meat offers another food supply to the technologically advanced. The Shuluum article offers a really neat way of providing bulk amounts of food to low tech planets. It is cheap to make stores for a long time. It provides ease of storage and use for military units, and beats the glop out of a fusion stile hands down.

Anyone else have any ideas about it?
Could the space station numbers be used to indicate a clone tank vat farm?

 

[phavoc]

I would think stations growing food wouldn't have vast fields of grain. However I do think that vertical farming and other industrialized types of farming would be the norm for stations. For the poorer masses you might see low grade glop, but most likely those that can afford it will choose real fresh food. Glop makes the tummy full, but who doesn't like fresh food?

 

[PsiTraveller]

I have to admit I have been influenced by books like "Islands in the Net" by Bruce Sterling. His use of Scop, single cell protein costing pennies a pound. Famine has been solved, you just have to forget about the vats crammed with swarming bacteria. The CHON food factories of the heechee are another technological food production system to try and have.

HeLa cells, the immortal cell line of Henrietta Lacks. Her cells have been replicated so many times they estimate that 20 tons have been grown. So the carniculture and meat vats are a possibility.

insect protein fed into a fusion stile and flavoured to palatability (good tasting Glop) is another idea.

I like the vertical farming idea, and gene tailored crops for new worlds. I am just trying to produce food technologically to allow a station to produce enough to be supply a Naval fleet.

 

[Condottiere]

How fast would be the growing cycle and how many times can you harvest per year?

There's always the old standby, soylent green.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Well the Goods produced chart on page 61 has Live Animals being produced from Agricultural plants.

3 dT of live animals per day from a 20 dT barn? Even roaches would envy that fecundity!

I guess that some single cell organism growing in nutrient could do that?

 

[PsiTraveller]

That is why I posted the question, 3T from 20 T per day is 'magic vat of goo' fast. Even 1 ton per day output is fast. The mechanical side is easy to explain by automated factories, the biological side, not so much.
I am interested in food output though, a super critical water oxidizer system or something, to produce a lot of food in space, but am trying to reduce the hand wavium content.

 

[-Daniel-]

Well the Goods produced chart on page 61 has Live Animals being produced from Agricultural plants.

3 dT of live animals per day from a 20 dT barn? Even roaches would envy that fecundity!

Maybe the "Animals" are something like Mealworms. Something that breads quickly and in large batches.

 

[phavoc]

I have to admit I have been influenced by books like "Islands in the Net" by Bruce Sterling. His use of Scop, single cell protein costing pennies a pound. Famine has been solved, you just have to forget about the vats crammed with swarming bacteria. The CHON food factories of the heechee are another technological food production system to try and have.

HeLa cells, the immortal cell line of Henrietta Lacks. Her cells have been replicated so many times they estimate that 20 tons have been grown. So the carniculture and meat vats are a possibility.

insect protein fed into a fusion stile and flavoured to palatability (good tasting Glop) is another idea.

I like the vertical farming idea, and gene tailored crops for new worlds. I am just trying to produce food technologically to allow a station to produce enough to be supply a Naval fleet.

The vertical farming techniques basically allow food to be grown 24x7, since plants don't need to sleep like animals. Plus add in things like gene splicing, fertilizers, no insects, etc, you could get some types of crops to produce at a far higher rate. It really depends on the type. And since you are talking stations, don't forget about aquaculture. They have that now, for things like shrimp and other smaller fish. They can be 'grown' pretty much anywhere. Also don't forget that some types of crops need nature's helpers (bee's and such) to pollinate and spread things from plant to plant.

I don't think planetary crops would be totally displaced. For one thing wind, soil, and other things that can't be predicted change the taste of food. So foodies will always be seeking out a new tastes.

And... if you want to throw a little wrench and get into the drawbacks of this sort of growing, you can easily contract a blight that would rapidly be spread in such an enclosed environment, wiping out an entire crop. I've seen the same happen to aquaculture, too. Depending on the problem, you may lose a crop, you may lose multiple ones until you can totally expunge whatever it is causing your problems. And the enclosed environments mean it could, potentially, jump from crop to crop, depending on a lot of factors.

 

[Condottiere]

Artificial flavouring should remain a profitable industry.

 

[alex_greene]

Food might come out of 3D printers in the future, using undifferentiated stem cells and/or genome sequencing to produce food with the taste and texture of real food. All one would need would be the raw materials to fabricate the tissues with the appropriate texture and flavour.

 

[phavoc]

Depending on how deep one wants to go into the process, most foods grown require a great deal of water. In a closed environment like a station much of that could be recovered, filtered (hopefully!!) and re-used. But if the station is exporting a lot elsewhere then it will need to import large quantities of water as a base resource. I'm not sure how much the book solution takes that into account (though to be fair it's probably more detail than anybody cares to go in to). Personally I like to at least see things like that mentioned because it allows a player or a referee to figure out a way to do something. But at some point too much detail gets distracting and bogs the game down.

 

[alex_greene]

Depending on how deep one wants to go into the process, most foods grown require a great deal of water. In a closed environment like a station much of that could be recovered, filtered (hopefully!!) and re-used. But if the station is exporting a lot elsewhere then it will need to import large quantities of water as a base resource. I'm not sure how much the book solution takes that into account (though to be fair it's probably more detail than anybody cares to go in to). Personally I like to at least see things like that mentioned because it allows a player or a referee to figure out a way to do something. But at some point too much detail gets distracting and bogs the game down.

Comet ice.

 

[phavoc]

Comet ice.

That's one way. But maybe you can mine an ice planetoid, or even collect hydrogen and Oxygen from a gas giant and make it yourself.

 

[-Daniel-]

Food might come out of 3D printers in the future, .....

Or out of replicators. :wink:

Depending on how deep one wants to go into the process,..... [snip] But at some point too much detail gets distracting and bogs the game down.

I agree with you, I tend to increase the detail o the situations the players are interested in and gloss over things they are not interested in. Some games like to focus more on the action while others on the world building/exploration. A good GM has to know when to walk away from the minutiae. :mrgreen:

 

[Condottiere]

 

[alex_greene]

Somehow I feel compelled to play Herve Roy's "Lover's Theme" when I look at the above picture.

 

[PsiTraveller]

If 2 girls show up in the thread I am going to ask mods to close it immediately.