Pondering starship evolution

[kilemall]

As I recall in closedbiome domes there is usually a provision for fish droppings to be cycled into fertilizer. Same I presume for your pen room. A compost bin that might include human waste input will not be amiss.

 

[Spinward Flow]

When you're absolutely convinced that if you had to redo your deck plans, there must have been a better way/room for improvements over the previous draft.

Decided to ditch the bilateral symmetry this time and go for something that would make the farm crops "more accessible" by way of leaving access space to walk between things. For example, those two crop rows by the iris valve have ~0.3m of spacing between them ... just enough to sidestep along between them, but not enough to really turn around in when going in to harvest something off the (presumably) climbing vines. The offset staggered crops below them have "stepping spaces" between them so that someone can step over/between the ground level vegetation. The fruit bearing bushes/trees (with literal low hanging fruit!) against the back wall are relatively accessible.

Obviously, the Animal Pens returned to being a 1x2 deck squares space, but now with less area wasted on excessive/unnecessary walkway space.

Think I'll try doing 3 bushes/trees instead of 4 so as to "slot" more of the "offset dots" crops in between the trees for a bit more access spacing.

As I recall in closed biome domes there is usually a provision for fish droppings to be cycled into fertilizer. Same I presume for your pen room. A compost bin that might include human waste input will not be amiss.

The idea here is that in a Regenerative Biome Life Support Laboratory setup, at the Environmental Control Type V-c standard (under my own house rules, because CT never addressed this properly, despite Annic Nova existing) you need 2 tons of Laboratory per humaniti class sophont ... so one 12 ton Laboratory Module like this is capable of supporting and sustaining closed loop life support recycling for up to 6 persons ... who can be accommodated in two 12 ton Stateroom Boxes that contain three single occupancy staterooms each. You just need to "link" the modules together (for housekeeping services, if nothing else) and supply base load power from another craft's fusion power plant (usually a starship or small craft with a maneuver drive will suffice) and you're basically set.

• Type V-c: This level relies more upon the gardens for providing food than the algae vats. It also incorporates small animals like chickens or fish (usually any edible herbivore up to about 10kg).

This basically means that you need to "spend more tonnage" per person (net 6 tons per stateroom, not just 4 tons) and have an increase in crew requirements (service/steward plus medical) ... but I figure that the "intangibles" of a better quality of life aboard and the reputation it would bring to space travel are something that just can't be appreciated by bean counters who only care about spreadsheets.

That's why I keep iterating these deck plans like I'm doing ... because I'm not just building a ship (and the crew it would need), I'm also building a HOME for that crew to live in and take pride in that can be their safe harbor while traveling between the stars (and getting into adventures). To my mind, it makes the shipboard life experience "feel more real" when I try to imagine what life must be like for starship crews.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I am now very sorely pressed to think that there can possibly be any deck plan arrangement superior to this latest one, given the 5x5 deck squares (12 displacement tons, configuration: 4 close structure) form factor @ TL=10.

Oh, you'll find it.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Oh, you'll find it.

Well, since there are fireworks going off outside my windows (keeping me awake) ... why not?

When you're absolutely convinced that if you had to redo your deck plans, there must have been a better way/room for improvements over the previous draft.

You know, I think I actually prefer this "3 bushes/trees among the crops" look even better. Among other things is harkens back to the notion that each of these 12 ton laboratory modules is supporting (a multiple of) three people's life support requirements. Now, with a Type: V-c arrangement that means 6 single occupancy staterooms, so 2 Stateroom Boxes per 1 Laboratory Module ... but if anyone feels like upgrading to Type: V-d on the regenerative biome life support, that ratio of 2:1 drops down to 1:1 and the "symmetry" of having "3 for 3" (instead of 6 for 3) asserts itself rather nicely.

It also isn't an "overly dense" arrangement, where you can easily imagine being able to move around within the space and harvest from the bounty as you go to gather up foodstuffs for freshly cooked meals to be eaten by omnivores (such as humaniti).

If I were overly ambitious I would do yet another iteration that would simply put a "ring" of crops around each bush/tree, which would push them farther away from the exterior bulkhead, but I think I prefer leaving them where they are with a staggered double row in front for easy access on the side facing the grav lift.



At any rate, after some (documented) experimentation, I think I've now got the Final Form™ that I want to use for these Laboratory Modules in my deck plans.

 

[kilemall]

Well sure, quality for crew on the go plus skipping the Cr2000 life support tax. But there is more to my point here.

Since you are skipping out on the life support pit stops, everything needs to be handled, including the waste.

Presumably there are things like bioengineered algae processing/using wastes or at the least some water recyclers with water being squeezed out/purified leaving dry stuff to be cleaned out of tanks at the next service starport. But you’re skipping all that, so your long term support system needs a provision to handle all that.

I assume wastes are actually valuable especially to space stations/low atmo downports as a source of chemicals and fertilizers, keeping the costs down to standard fees comparatively with planets with actual biomes.

 

[Condottiere]

The problem with life support in Traveller is, it's very hard to deconstruct it, so you don't know where to cut corners.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Since you are skipping out on the life support pit stops, everything needs to be handled, including the waste.

It is.

Presumably there are things like bioengineered algae processing/using wastes or at the least some water recyclers with water being squeezed out/purified leaving dry stuff to be cleaned out of tanks at the next service starport. But you’re skipping all that, so your long term support system needs a provision to handle all that.

Two things.

The closed loop of the life support system is not *perfect* so there are going to be "losses" over time of various chemical elements, mixtures and compounds. Efficiency is NOT 100% on the recycling (I'm assuming) of waste solids, liquids and gasses, therefore ... in isolation, in a vacuum (so to speak) ... a Type V-c regenerative biome life support system WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL without external feedstock inputs to replace those losses, because it's not a "complete ecosystem" like the biosphere of a planet would be (it's just a "portable piece" of one).

To put it in simplified gaming terms, the regenerative biome life support laboratory systems (that I've outlined via house rules) have what amounts to a "mean time till failure" ... which is not set at "infinity" (or even close to it). It's not some kind of "perpetual motion machine" type of dodge that "lasts forever" all on its own.

So for game theory economics simulation purposes ... YES ... inclusion of such systems DO allow "skipping the Cr2000 life support tax" as you've cited above (because that's kind of the point and purposes of the entire exercise, you know? ) on a bi-weekly basis. HOWEVER ... there are TWO mitigating circumstances involved beyond "just construction" that make that possible.



The first ... is wilderness refueling and having an onboard fuel purification plant.

Nominally, a fuel purification plant is a high tech filter/refinery used to extract L-H₂ from whatever is being skimmed for fuel (usually water from a river/lake/ocean or the atmosphere of a gas giant). Raw "unrefined" fuel skimmed by starships using fuel scoops is going to have ... impurities ... in the mix, a remarkably wide variety of impurities in fact. Since the objective of "refined" fuel is to extract high purity L-H₂ (exclusively!) from whatever matter is being skimmed by the fuel scoops, everything that is NOT hydrogen is essentially "waste chemistry" to a starship's fuel processing refinery.

With me so far?

Now, normally ... that "waste chemistry" that results from the wilderness refueling process gets either stored onboard starships and "offloaded" while berthed at starports (so the SPA can find a use for that waste stream to help defray operating expenses) or gets "vented" overboard at "responsible times" to purge the fuel purification systems prior to refining and processing another load of wilderness refueling skimmed unrefined fuel. Travellerwiki notes that some gas giants, such as Monoda in the Choleosti/Vilis star system, have "heavily contaminated" atmospheres which can presumably be "problematic" for general use fuel purification plants to deal with (while specialized systems would presumably not have the same issues).

My point being, wilderness refueling is going to generate "waste chemistry" as a byproduct of the L-H₂ refining process (because that's how chemistry works). SOME of that "waste chemistry" generated by wilderness fuel refining is going to be ... useful ... as a feedstock for topping up life support systems. Oxygen separated from water (H₂O) and carbon separated from methane (CH₄), for example, by the purification of wilderness skimmed unrefined fuels into refined L-H₂ fuel will have uses for topping up losses in and stabilizing a regenerative biome life support system. Automated systems that are part of the Laboratory Module will be able to take those "waste chemistry" inputs as feedstocks for further processing to replace losses over time that result from continuous operation of the regenerative biome life support systems. Waste generated by the living sophonts onboard ship (solids, liquids and gasses) are likewise reclaimed, recycled and "flushed/purified" through the regenerative biome to renew and replenish life support reserves in a (mostly) closed loop cycle (just not a "perfect" 100% efficient closed loop cycle).

So wilderness refueling and the purification of unrefined fuel into refined fuel for use in the starship's drive systems becomes a source of replenishment for the starship's life support systems as well, using the "waste chemistry" byproducts of the fuel refining process (waste not, want not) that would otherwise be "useless" and routinely dumped (either while berthed at starports or "responsibly" out in environments somewhere). I'm thinking that "aiming waste dumps" at planetary atmospheres (at orbital velocities), so that the discarded "waste chemistry" can burn up on atmospheric entry, might be a mildly popular pastime among pilots for disposal of unwanted matter in order to purge ship systems if there is insufficient ground support for extended periods of time.

So that's mitigating circumstance ONE.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The second ... is annual overhaul maintenance.

Every starship needs to undergo an overhaul maintenance "every year" where the ship gets laid up for 2 weeks while starport shipyard crews swarm over it to test, tune and fix up any systems that will be "drifting out of balance" towards failure. The same will also hold true for a regenerative biome life support laboratory (go figure, eh? ).

The point being that so long as the "mean time between failure" for the regenerative biome life support system is simply long enough that it ought to receive an annual overhaul maintenance BEFORE being at risk of failing, it becomes possible to "reset the clock" on failures every year (so to speak) with a good record of timely scheduling in the annual overhaul maintenance.

That way, the regenerative biome life support systems do not need to be designed to "last forever" without upkeep or maintenance of any kind ... they just need to last "long enough" to receive regular and routine overhaul maintenance every year. However, if that annual overhaul maintenance gets deferred too long ... just like with drive systems in engineering ... the regenerative biome life support laboratory systems can ALSO suffer a "breakdown" which will require "repairs" to correct the problem (which will often times be more expensive than having simply done the annual overhaul maintenance in a more timely fashion in the first place). If the regenerative biome life support system DOES suffer a "breakdown" due to a lack of annual overhaul maintenance (or whatever...) that requires repairs, a ship's crew can simply go back to paying the Cr2000 per week life support "tax" every 2 weeks for life support replenishment "the usual way" (which is basically Environmental Control Type III standard, instead, not one of the Type V-a to V-e standards).

Presumably there are things like bioengineered algae processing/using wastes or at the least some water recyclers with water being squeezed out/purified leaving dry stuff to be cleaned out of tanks at the next service starport. But you’re skipping all that, so your long term support system needs a provision to handle all that.

When I say ... "it does" ... are you inclined to believe me?

I assume wastes are actually valuable especially to space stations/low atmo downports as a source of chemicals and fertilizers, keeping the costs down to standard fees comparatively with planets with actual biomes.

Presumably there are some "waste chemistry" feedstocks that result from routine starship operations (fuel refining, life support, etc.) that are potentially valuable (chemically) as concentrated ... albeit "unrefined" ... sources of a variety of chemical byproducts. At that point, it turns into "one man's trash is another man's treasure" kind of opportunism for industrial applications, with the "economies of scale" angle thrown in for good measure.

When you start putting starships into a "reuse, renew, recycle as many atoms as you can" economic model of business, rather than looking at everything involved with starships as being "single use, disposable" in a never ending cycle of consume and dump ... just by virtue of their operations starships can become low grade "chemical refineries" for all kinds of byproduct feedstocks for industries that would be useful in a space based economy (where even DIRT isn't necessarily a "cheap" resource!).

Just look at records for the early Solomani spacefarers aboard their International Space Station.
Thanks to their limited early technology, they were able to recycle water aboard the orbital habitat ... leading one astronaut to famously (back in the day) declare, "Yesterday's coffee is today's coffee and will be tomorrow's coffee."



There was a time (in Solomani history) when Coal Tar was nothing more than (and I quote) ... "tons of useless muck" ... until someone figured out how to start making an absolute FORTUNE from a waste material that no one else wanted.

If you would like to learn more about how turning otherwise "useless muck" (by the ton!) into something valuable is even possible ... the best reference around for that is none other than James Burke and his original Connections series ... specifically, Episode 7: The Long Chain (runtime 49:27) that REPEATEDLY keeps having the "useless muck" of Coal Tar coming back into the story, over and over again as the feedstock source for new products and industries.

You're welcome.

 

[kilemall]

I’m well aware of waste feedstock processes. What I don’t see is anything doing that in your biome module.

 

[Spinward Flow]

When you're absolutely convinced that if you had to redo your deck plans, there must have been a better way/room for improvements over the previous draft.

What I don’t see is anything doing that in your biome module.

* points at extremely obvious life support system machinery iconography behind the maintenance hatches in the top left corner *

* waits patiently *​

 

[Grav_Moped]

@Spinward Flow:
- Wouldn't have thought of using the "contaminants" from wilderness refueling as chemical feedstock for the biome -- not sure it's entirely workable, but it's clever and a plausible lampshade* to hang on the problem.
- 1 year worth of consumables (nutrients, fertilizers, etc.) stockpiled at each annual overhaul? Another good lampshade for the problem.

----------------
* "Hanging a lampshade on it": "Yeah, we know, and we know you'll notice. At least we tried, ok?"

 

[kilemall]

* points at extremely obvious life support system machinery iconography behind the maintenance hatches in the top left corner *

* waits patiently *​

Says tanks to me, storage not processing. Kind of like using a disk storage icon and saying it represents a computer.

But ok, that’s half a ton of processors and we are edging into maker tech TL. Assuming there are external lines plugged in from other parts of the ship/community through ceiling/floor feeding in waste and delivering fresh water from the processors, waste going to fertilizer (maybe maker feedstock?) and air from the plant section, plausible.

Species choice is key. Animals in the pen for instance need to not be big oxygen consumers, and the plants need to be big oxygen producers (along with whatever scrubbers are in the processor). Fruit trees aren’t necessarily best scrubbers, crops can fix a lot of oxygen but need to be cleared out/processed before being net CO2 producers, etc.

 

[Condottiere]

I thought oxygen production was a night and day issue for plants.

 

[Spinward Flow]

- Wouldn't have thought of using the "contaminants" from wilderness refueling as chemical feedstock for the biome

Most people don't ... until it's pointed out to them.

I mean, seriously ... what's the difference between unrefined and refined fuel (aside from price per ton and chance of misjumping?).
Answer ... "waste chemistry" ... if you start to think about the problem even a little bit, particularly in light of the fact that fuel purification plants are going to need to be able to deal with a WIDE variety of unrefined fuel sources (oceans on different planets! gas giants with different atmosphere mixes! etc.).

Plus, you're going to need the power of a fusion reactor to do all of the electrolysis/chemical separation work for you anyway, so ... might as well put that "waste chemistry" to good use. I mean, if you're already generating "waste chemistry" from wilderness refueling in order to avoid having to pay for starport fuel (~165 tons consumed per jump = Cr165,000 unrefined or Cr825,000 refined fuel costs! ) and keep overhead expenses low enough (because wilderness refueling is "free" aside from travel time and skimming duration required). So you're using fusion power to do chemical refining in a fuel purification plant ... and all of the "waste chemistry" from doing that fuel refining is going to be a more concentrated form of "Not L-H₂" that gets used to fill up the fuel tanks with.

I like to think of the byproduct "waste chemistry" produced by fuel purification as being akin to the "Black Mass" generated by the recycling of lithium ion batteries and solar panels. You wind up with a mixture of compounds and elements that are in aggregate "useless, as is" (because it's just mulched materials ground up together) but which has extremely high concentrations of useful elements that would be far more expensive to obtain and purify from virgin sources. Therefore, the "Black Mass" contains high value as a feedstock for refining processes to renew, recycle and reuse those elements into new products (just input energy to do so ... and with fusion power technology ... go figure).

In terms of practicality, you're using nuclear power (fusion) to do chemical work of separating molecules into elements so as to use those elements to form new molecules. Fusion gives you "all the power you need" to do that kind of chemical refining, combined with MakerTech to do the disassembly/reassembly of molecules to atoms to molecules using chemical feedstocks that are fit for purpose. Build your wilderness refueling purification plant to output the feedstocks that are useful to a regenerative biome life support laboratory setup and you're on your way.

it's clever and a plausible lampshade* to hang on the problem.

And that's the thing, it's PLAUSIBLE.
All of the bits and pieces are conceptually there ... you just need to creatively assemble them for a new application, which is PLAUSIBLE.

I would even argue that what I'm talking about with the fuel purification + regenerative biome life support laboratory paradigm is (ironically) even MORE PLAUSIBLE than "magical maneuver drives that switch off gravity" in order to be reactionless or fusion power plants that do not require massive heat sinks ... to say nothing of "ripping a hole in the universe and falling into it" in order to travel FTL. If that's where the "plausibility bar" is set for engineering drives, I think it's safe to say that my regenerative biome life support laboratory paradigm "passes that test" for plausibility with flying colors by comparison.

Says tanks to me, storage not processing.

In my own defense, I didn't create the iconography from scratch. I'm simply using what Starship Geomorphs 2.0 and associated products designate as being Life Support machinery (to differentiate it from other types of machinery for other purposes). I'm then taking that iconography and creatively doing cut/paste/copy work with it to create my own custom deck plans using the LEGO building blocks approach.

I'm now familiar enough with the Starships Geomorphs "visual language" of parts and pieces that I can basically look at a single component and have a pretty good idea of what it is, even without labels, because the "visual language" is such that it can be used with a high degree of consistency. It's basically a more detailed extension of the CT deck plans visual language (that was far more abstract/less detailed and

But ok, that’s half a ton of processors and we are edging into maker tech TL.

NOW you're getting it ...
more concerned with tabletop wargaming).

Assuming there are external lines plugged in from other parts of the ship/community through ceiling/floor feeding in waste and delivering fresh water from the processors, waste going to fertilizer (maybe maker feedstock?) and air from the plant section, plausible.

THIS.
Housekeeping services linking modules together (through hangar bay facilities, which cost Cr2000 per ton of capacity, not cargo bay facilities, which cost Cr0 per ton of capacity) is what allows the circulation of "waste chemistry" and "fresh produce" between different discrete hulls (12 ton modules, laser fighter small craft, starship) to happen in a relatively seamless fashion (game mechanically speaking). The trick is, such aspects have to be designed in from the start in order to be able to integrate together properly, rather than being some kind of bolt-on aftermarket conversion kit.

This makes the modules with interconnection capabilities slightly more expensive to construct than the alternative which lacks such features, but the flexibility such a design choice offers to an operator who can make use of that expanded capability is well worth the added expense (according to my research into the notion).

 

[Spinward Flow]

Species choice is key. Animals in the pen for instance need to not be big oxygen consumers, and the plants need to be big oxygen producers (along with whatever scrubbers are in the processor). Fruit trees aren’t necessarily best scrubbers, crops can fix a lot of oxygen but need to be cleared out/processed before being net CO2 producers, etc.

All TRUE.
However, when you've got ENTIRE WORLDS worth of ecosystems to choose from, my assumption is that there will be SOME species that will "make the cut" as being suitable for this purpose.

The way that *I* think about it is that you want to be looking at Rich worlds and/or Agricultural worlds as the source for the species to put into the regenerative biome laboratories ... with Rich+Agricultural worlds being the preferred ideal. Other options would of course be possible (so I'm not locking anything in by rules here with this), particularly for different sophont species that are adapted to different environmental conditions. You could do an Atmosphere: 5 regenerative biome laboratory if you really wanted to, rather than requiring Atmosphere: 6 or 8, in order to reduce the engineering stress on the outer bulkheads due to the overpressure differential in vacuum (for example).

Point being that WHERE the biome species comes from can become something of a character/story point for individual starships and their crews, in effect tying them to specific world location(s) which have been transplanted into these laboratory modules that they take with them on their travels between the stars. This then enhances and enriches the backstory of specific ships operating in specific regions of space.

For example, I would expect that starships (and modules) constructed at Grote/Glisten/Spinward Marches would rely on Caladbolg/Sword Worlds/Spinward Marches (4 parsecs away) as the supplier of species for the regenerative biome life support modules constructed by SIE at Grote.

This would effectively mean that Grote becomes the "offworld shipyard" that constructs starships (type A starport) for use by commercial operators based at Caladbolg which can construct non-starships and small craft (type B starport) @ TL=10. This then makes Grote a "starship exporter" to Caladbolg, creating a supply of something that Caladbolg cannot build natively, but which is perfectly capable of supporting natively (type B starports can do annual overhauls of starships, they just can't construct them for commercial clients). This then creates a trading relationship between Grote and Caladbolg that benefits both world economies, with knock on effects that will influence development and soft power influence opportunties in the region.

Ships constructed at different shipyards would use different sources for species to populate their regenerative biome life support modules. Because the starship, laser fighter and modules are all TL=10 the entire concept and engineering integration is effectively "portable" and can be proliferated elsewhere to other locales relatively easily (all you need is the naval architect's spec sheet and the capital required to build the First In Class to start volume production).

And from something as simple as that bit of backstory, I've got all I need to nurture that notion into a story that can fill a Fluff Text™ writeup and provide a scattering of seeds for sowing into a variety of adventures and campaigns ... not just in the Spinward Marches, but pretty much ANYWHERE that LBB2 standard drives are allowed to be a Thing™.

Or to put it another way ... it's not just about the numbers on a spreadsheet, but HOW and WHAT you use them FOR (and WHY, of course) as a Player or as a Referee (or a Game Designer, or...).

I thought oxygen production was a night and day issue for plants.

Broadly speaking, (Solomani) terrestrial plants need to do both and have adapted to a circadian day/night cycle.
During the day, they photosynthesize to create sugars and O₂, then at night they use respiration to consume those sugars for energy and create CO₂. It's just that on balance, a lot of plants tend to be net positive O₂ generators, as opposed to being exclusively O₂ generators.

It's up to the "science hippies" to figure out which species are the best mix to use in the laboratory modules that actually go into space.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Two bits:
- The discard-pile chemicals from wilderness refueling vary, as noted. Over the course of months of reloads, it isn't too much of a stretch to assert that it balance out. But it might not.

- There are issues with the idea of discrete trees/shrubs and actual livestock, in contrast to algae tanks and meat from cloned cultures, at the smaller end of the scale. It's a continuum between aesthetics and plausibility. (Yes, that IS a real cow in Cargo Hold #4. You have no idea how hard we're pushing the hydroponics to grow enough hay for it...)

 

[whartung]

The biggest issue with a biome system is time.

The most basic example is composting. Now, I don't know, I don't compost. In our state, we have 3 trash bins: black for trash, blue for recycle (paper, glass, aluminum) and green for yard waste. The state also wants us to collect kitchen and meal food waste and put it into the yard waste bin, rather than the regular trash.

Some have suggested getting a "countertop composter".

Here's a random one: https://huckberry.com/store/bamboo-composter/category/p/62610-countertop-composter

Now, I'm not a microbiologist. But as I understand it the composting process takes time. The vendor calls this a "composter", but seems just like a fancy pail to me. I can see filling that up with banana peels alone in a week and then what? I have a pail full of rotting banana peels. What do I do next week? I have no idea how long it will take to become "garden rich compost". But it's certainly not overnight.

When it takes nine months to make a baby, or 2 weeks (or whatever) to make compost, the only way to scale such an operation is by volume. More plants respirating, more composts composting, more mothers mothering. Of course you can power composting. We call that an "oven". (Does not work with mothers...)

That means the the biome system is only viable on larger ships, ships with room to scale the operation.

I've heard that a family of 4 can live mostly self-sufficiently (which means, mostly food) off of an acre of land. Growing their own crops, slaughtering their own goats, chickens, and pigs, and, I assume, feeding them as well (scraps to the pigs, rough grazing for the goats, home grown corn and such for the chickens). Of course that family doesn't need to filter CO2 and create oxygen.

I saw on the TV show "The Expanse" how the ship had vertical wall gardens. What I don't know is how much CO2->O2 those plants created.

The old sage, ChatGPT gave this as an answer:

For example, a mature leafy tree such as an oak or a beech can convert roughly about 22 kilograms (48 pounds) of CO2 into oxygen per year, which is enough to support at least two humans.

My ships tend to not have room for oaks.

It then goes on talking about rapidly growing plants consuming more carbon, which create more oxygen, etc., but big leafy trees are the most efficient just out of raw surface area. There's always talks about percolating algae and such.

Anyway, I think that even with efficient biologic mechanisms (engineered plants, selectively bred livestock), there's a baseline thats necessary, and there's also a fundamental quanta of time involved that can't be rush save through scaling and consuming more space. This suggest that there's a minimum viable size for such an operation.

 

[kilemall]

Two bits:
- The discard-pile chemicals from wilderness refueling vary, as noted. Over the course of months of reloads, it isn't too much of a stretch to assert that it balance out. But it might not.

- There are issues with the idea of discrete trees/shrubs and actual livestock, in contrast to algae tanks and meat from cloned cultures, at the smaller end of the scale. It's a continuum between aesthetics and plausibility. (Yes, that IS a real cow in Cargo Hold #4. You have no idea how hard we're pushing the hydroponics to grow enough hay for it...)

If having real cow gets you pluses in high passage rolls, might be worth the trouble.

One other thing this topic has got me thinking about- unrestricted waste dump, particularly sewage.

If you are at a D, E, or X starport whatever life support buys are local ersatz arrangements, possibly exorbitant or troublesome, or not available at any price. The experienced trader will likely bank a couple tons of life support in the hold ala Beltstrike to tide over such backwater stops.

But eventually it will be prudent to want to get rid of waste that accumulates and isn’t readily recyclable that normally is handled by life support services at the starport.

So a few problems.

The poor or no facility nature of the starport doesn’t mean the locals don’t mind you dropping sewage at the pad. It may be boondocks to your crew, but it’s their home, paltry as the one poni star village may be.

Might even be able to sell the sewage as fertilizer to some organics/chemical poor communities, but definitely case by case. If not, I would expect an agreed upon dumping ground is in order.

And not in the local water supply lake or river.

The other is introducing or feeding a human biology in unregulated form to an alien biome.

Presumably whatever presence is on the planet is probably contaminating in whatever manner, but not like a starship dump so to speak with not only typical human waste, but also whatever alien biologies and/or foods/hitchiking species.

So that may mean there are extensive health regulations about where and when such voiding takes place with planetary law taking effect in the absence of formal extrality.

Or worse, unknown unintended consequences, biome wrecking plague generating animals gone wild natives revolting consequences. May have been 1000 other ship pit stops and local carelessness and ignorance that caused it, but your travellers are there to deal with it.

 

[Spinward Flow]

- The discard-pile chemicals from wilderness refueling vary, as noted. Over the course of months of reloads, it isn't too much of a stretch to assert that it balance out. But it might not.

This is true.
The chemical yields of wilderness refueling sources will vary WIDELY ... like really really widely! However, you don't want to be thinking in terms of complete and total turnover of your entire life support system, but rather in terms of "topping up" whatever might be lost over a given time frame (say, 4-6 months, generically speaking). That way, even if the chemical composition of the unrefined fuel isn't "perfectly suitable every single time" to cover whatever losses occur in the life support closed loop every 2-3 weeks (basically, per destination), the life support systems have sufficient reserves capacity to "skip a few refueling cycles" until a better feedstock results from a fuel purification cycle somewhere along your journey. If you're measuring losses in terms of kilograms of matter that get "lost" due to recycling inefficiencies, rather than in terms of metric tons of matter that needs to be replaced, it all turns into something that you can grind out on the margins.

Chemically then, it becomes something akin to a "feast or famine" type of cycle when it comes to various chemical feedstocks ... and you just need sufficient reserve capacity to tide you over during the "famine" times between "feasts" available from fuel purification processing. All of which is WELL BELOW the granularity of the starship construction rules of CT, so I'm really just talking Fluff Text™ here to put some "meat" on the "skeleton" of the numbers needed to allocated tonnage and MCr in starship construction.

- There are issues with the idea of discrete trees/shrubs and actual livestock, in contrast to algae tanks and meat from cloned cultures, at the smaller end of the scale. It's a continuum between aesthetics and plausibility.

I take that as being a simple matter of larger laboratory facilities can "afford" greater diversity and variety. One of those "we make it up in volume" kinds of answers.

(Yes, that IS a real cow in Cargo Hold #4. You have no idea how hard we're pushing the hydroponics to grow enough hay for it...)

Well, to be fair, Environmental Control Type V-c standard includes animals up to 10kg in size for carniculture, which presumably could also mean "lab meat" rather than live animal to be killed and slaughtered for its meat. It's only when you get up to Type V-d and V-e that you can start looking at larger meat animals, such as cows.

That means the the biome system is only viable on larger ships, ships with room to scale the operation.

Depends on how complex you want your regenerative biome life support to be.
Read the reference regarding the different grades of Environmental Control Type V-a to V-e standards.
Then take a look at my house rules regarding the problem.

You'll quickly notice the lack of any upper or lower bounds on the application of the different types ... since those are questions best answered by a combination of practicality and use cases (along with Design Ethics and Good Taste™). There are certainly EFFICIENCIES to be had at different types at different scales, due to where various breakpoints fall (need more crew for this type vs that type, tonnage required for the application, etc.). That then lets things be more "free form" in terms of scaling and possible applications, rather than enforcing a "you must be this high to ride this ride" type of schema (aside from the tonnage and heightened crew requirements).

My ships tend to not have room for oaks.

Additionally, oak trees do not produce edible (let alone, tasty) fruits for consumption by humaniti, so oak trees would be a Bad Move™ for inclusion in one of these smaller biomes anyway. Given the scale I'm working at (7.5x7.5x3m hull form factor), the green "tree" (icons) are most likely fruit bearing bushes/shrubs because you want edibles that can be consumed by crew/passengers and then waste recycled back into the biome.

 

[whartung]

Additionally, oak trees do not produce edible (let alone, tasty) fruits for consumption by humaniti,

Actually acorns were a staple of the diet of the indigenous peoples of the western US. I won't say they're tasty, however.