Spaceship Food

[Tundra]

Okay, what would they be eating on a spaceship? Is some sort of food creation machine even remotely likely in the next 100 years?
There'd obviously (?) be some sort of hydroponics to help out, but what else would they have for a loooong spaceship voyage?

[Orion283]

A hundred years from now you could have flash-cloned nutrient bars or something.

[vindemiatrix]

I would actually find a non-hydroponic garden on the ship to be more likely than "food creation". As well as producing crops to supplement the diet, the garden would also be a fair way to recycle CO2 and provide breathable oxygen. Of course, I saw this in a movie, so perhaps I'm wrong when I say it's more likely. ;)

Besides, I think in these stories explaining too much away with things like food creators is a missed opportunity: the limitations of lesser and more attainable technology are more interesting imho. It's up to you and the kind of story you want to write, though!

[MichaelB]

I agree with the garden thing, but only on ships big enough to support one. And then there's the problem of seasonality (unless plants in the distant future are bred /genetically modified to fruit all year round), crop rotation, eventual spiralling of genetic flaws unless you have a large enough crop (and even then, but slower), pollenation and recycling...

At any rate, grass (not trees) is still the best way to recycle CO2 and release fresh O2 known to modern humans. Doubtless there will eventually be technology that can replicate this, possibly with some kickass nano-laser filtration system, but until such technology becomes not only efficient enough to bother with but also economical enough to run continuously without being too much of a drain on the ship's power system, plants remain the best option.

[vindemiatrix]

Good, I was hoping someone with more knowledge than me would turn up. ^_^ I guess I still find it more believable that we could genetically-engineer viable spacefaring plants than invent something that makes food, even with all the (interesting) problems. However, as Michael says, it depends on the size of your ship, and if your story isn't really "about" the ship -- if it's more about the people on it -- then you can gloss over the details of where the food comes from.

[MichaelB]

I think having a farm is a much, much more realistic solution than having a magical foodmotron that just "creates" food. Nothing comes from nothing, the food machine will still actually require the raw ingredients to work with. It's just a matter of getting plants to adjust to spaceship conditions. Gravity, pressure, rotation, light sources, all of that sort of thing.

And Vindie, I don't see anything wrong with hydroponically-grown plants on a spaceship: why did you suggest non-hydroponic? I'm just curious, because it seems to me that nutitionally-controlled drip-feeding is far more viable for a space setting than transporting a load of soil, detritivorous insects, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and such, and replenishing said soil with compost from spent plants. That kind of system will just collapse fairly quickly, due to a "nutrients in" < "nutrients out" scenario. Unless, of course, you also had herbivorous animals, or humans adopted entirely vegetarian diets and evolved so thoroughly that their waste became useable as fertiliser. I don't see that last one happening any time soon.

It also completely depends on the size of the spaceship and the size of the dried-food storage area. If most of your food is prepacked as dried, dehydrated or vaccum-sealed foods, you might have a plant or two to soak up the CO2 and maybe provide some nutritional balance (fresh Vitamin C would be absolutely essential, as I imagine space-scurvy would be much more painful than sea-scurvy), but if you have a huge "generational" city-sized ship planning for a voyage over 100 years, then you would need some kind of farm system for food, textiles and raw materials to fix broken things. (I imagine after a while and all the plastic chairs are broken, people will start to make cane and wicker chairs out of dried plant stems.)

Really though, the main issue is how much you want to reveal to your readers. I may sound like the world's biggest hypocrite, but there's no use in developing a perfectly balanced, economically feasible space-farm system that is self-sustaining for up to 500 years, if it will never come up in conversation in your story. The story will be about the characters, yes? So unless the characters purposefully have to deal with the food production process, all they'll worry about is "button is pressed, food comes out".

I think it would be interesting for a character to at least remark about some kind of massive farm that fuels the foodmatron machines, but if it won't be relevant to the plot of the tory of the characters of the story, there's no need to go into too much detail.

For my final remark, I think the food in The Matrix will probably be your best bet: a simple protein combined with synthetic amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Everything the body needs.

It will probably come in both chocolate-flavoured, and 'bar' forms, though. That's one detail the Wachowski brothers missed.

[AXJ]

And Vindie, I don't see anything wrong with hydroponically-grown plants on a spaceship: why did you suggest non-hydroponic? I'm just curious, because it seems to me that nutitionally-controlled drip-feeding is far more viable for a space setting than transporting a load of soil, detritivorous insects, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and such, and replenishing said soil with compost from spent plants. That kind of system will just collapse fairly quickly, due to a "nutrients in" < "nutrients out" scenario. Unless, of course, you also had herbivorous animals, or humans adopted entirely vegetarian diets and evolved so thoroughly that their waste became useable as fertiliser. I don't see that last one happening any time soon.

Why not? I know at least two off-the-grid, natural-living enthusiasts that grow most of their own food and rely heavily on output from their composting toilets for fertilization, along with composting other waste (eg inedible parts of the food plants, etc). Apparently food beds also present some good greywater treatment options, too. Again, not my area of specialty, but they seem to make it work somehow.

Also, I haven't changed the soil in my herb planters in like five years and they still seem to be doing okay.... <shrug>

T, you might want to start digging into some of the alternative/natural housing websites and self-reliance/off-the-grid websites for more info. I don't know of any offhand but if you go searching for 'earthships' and the like you'll probably start turning up options fairly quickly.

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One possible issue with going the farming route is the question of inefficiency. You'd have to convert power from whatever's powering the ship, to light that approximates sunlight, which turns into nutrients that power our bodies. That's a lot of steps, and entropy means you'll lose some (or more likely, a lot) of energy in each step. Plus you'll have to use up a lot of energy to harvest and cook the produce itself.

That's swell if you've got some kind of magic reactor that produces all the energy the ship will ever need and then some... but TBH that doesn't sound very interesting.

I think it'd be a lot more interesting to see a ship where careful energy management is a big issue. I mean, there's no sun, and there's no oil or natural gas or the like. So basically, everything that happens on the ship, from propulsion to lighting to life support to even humans moving their bodies around, is ultimately powered by whatever it is that's powering the ship. Seems like a lot of SF gives this only a passing nod, but I think in practice it'd probably be a very big deal.

I'm not saying farming is out, I'm just saying that it presents an interesting question of energy and efficieny.

[DanMarvin]

"Computer, Tea, Earl Gray" bzzzt... it materializes. Maybe it can use tribbles for the matter exchange.

The nice thing about sci fi is you don't really have to stress too much about the details. In 1910, there were no such things as McDonalds, Microwave ovens, or Dippin' Dots. Who knows what's likely in 2110, especially considering the amount of money that goes into food research?

[vindemiatrix]

The nice thing about sci fi is you don't really have to stress too much about the details.

I take it you don't read too much hard sci-fi. ;)

But yeah, for soft sci-fi, psuedoscience will pretty much cover it. The less detail you go into, in fact, the less things pedants will have to pick over, which is the luxury of soft sci-fi. Unless you want your characters to actually deal with problems with energy conservation (interesting idea, AXJ) or food production, then you can gloss over it a bit. Make occasional references to the oxygen garden or that someone's wasting energy and they're being disciplined for it, or whatever.

[Tundra]

Maybe I should come up with something completely ridiculous.

[MichaelB]

That seems to be the best best, Tundra! When it doubt, parody to the point of absurdity! Give them wristwatch-style Materialisers, or pocket-sized Replicators ("it's the SIZE of your POCKET!":lol:)!

edit: "off-the-grid websites". Contradiction in terms? :p

The problem with that analogy, AXJ, is that they're not living off-the-grid in an isolated space-bubble (shut up, I'm talking about one that isn't planet-sized. Or even moon-sized, probably). They have things like bees and insects and other small animals and such from other regions, and they have kilometres of nutrient-rich soils and clays, and weather events and erosion and, yes compost, but from a lot more than merely the waste-products from their farming operations. Vegetable matter from the forests around them and even from miles away contribute to the nutritional properties of their little patch of land, so even though there is a net loss of nutrients in the farming and composting operations, those nutrients are being replaced by environments miles away from them. Not even to mention the effect of the water cycle/table and rainwater runoff and absorbence from uphill. You can't replicate these things in a little space ship, even if you did build one the size of Britain (unlikely), because the smaller and more-isolated the system the quicker it falls into entropy. And there's strill a great deal that we don't know about how the environment fits together. We'd never be able to replicate it enough to produce anything truly sustainable in isolation for very long. Especially since some of the more important aspects are particularly annoying to humans (bees, wasps, flies, worms, bugs, mosquitoes etc) and likely to be voted off the island by the majority.

Basically, make something up and hope your readers don't question it too much (tip: don't draw attention to it, and reader are more likely to mentally skip past it. Make a big deal of it, and so will they).

[Kcore]

If it was that long of a space flight then they would most likely been in some form of deep sleep, not needing food at all.

[alcar]

I have a solution to the food problem. There's this fad for organic ships, right? Edible space ship. Have it regenerate (it would from being hit by meteors etc.) and it could provide all needed nutrients etc.

As an added bonus, bodily wastes would go into it and help it grow (ditto with dead bodies, if you want).

... I think this is why it's probably for the best I don't do sci fi.