Shipboard life support and food per person per day?

[casquilho]

This stuff is never really thought through in Traveller.

This fits so many subjects people argue over on this forum. Traveller is just not a simulation with all bases covered.

 

[whartung]

TV Dinners should taste amazing at Tech Level 14.

But they don't.

Consider the issues with airline food. Apparently, human taste changes at higher altitudes, even on pressurized aircraft, so they have to amp up the flavor profiles in the dishes, which isn't necessarily good.

Much of food flavor comes from the prep, and while some things do well when thawed out at high speed, many do not. Resuscitating a nice, grilled steak does not give you a nice, grilled steak.

I don't know if TL-14 has stasis bubbles. That's a classic SF trope to handle these kinds of things. Take the nice, grilled, steak, sizzling off of the fire, plonk it on a plate with hot, yummy sides, and drop it into stasis.

When you pop it out of stasis, 15 years later, it comes out still sizzling. The steam from the veggies trapped in the bubble now released.

I think if you want to consider starship food, the best thing to look it is however the boomer submarines manage it on their 60 day tours. I imagine they use every trick in the book (and as I understand it, the food is pretty good on submarines some of the best in the Navy).

 

[Dragoner]

Hydrogen and a match: H2O

 

[Condottiere]

No open flames onboard!

 

[bookwyrm]

This fits so many subjects people argue over on this forum. Traveller is just not a simulation with all bases covered.

Traveller - There is room for Improvement & Complexity, but Simplicity shouldn't be forgotten or ignored.

As long as the Equation above equals Fun, it's all good.

Disclaimer: As Fun is different for everyone, the Equation above will be different from one group of Travellers to another.

 

[Black Vulmea]

. . . (insert technobabble) . . .

I prefer my sci fi to be more Arthur C. Clarke than Gene Roddenberry.

Thinking through implications is part of the fun for me, not handwaving them away.

Disclaimer: As Fun is different for everyone, the Equation above will be different from one group of Travellers to another.

Also too.

 

[Black Vulmea]

No open flames onboard!

Funny you should mention this . . .

I'm doing a little solo Traveller using Beltstrike, just for giggles; the characters are husband-and-wife asteroid miners. He's belt-borne, but she grew up on a t-shirt world and struggles to understand why he says no way to candles or incense in their Type S.

 

[Badenov]

I prefer my sci fi to be more Arthur C. Clarke than Gene Roddenberry.

Thinking through implications is part of the fun for me, not handwaving them away.

The complicating factor with that is you have to have rougly the same level of science knowledge as your GM to think them through at the right level of detail. Otherwise you're making plans and the GM doesn't understand the implications of what you've done, or you don't understand the important subtle details the DM is sending your way. It's a bit of a dance, but you're lucky if you can manage technical details realistically with your DM.

 

[Black Vulmea]

This fits so many subjects people argue over on this forum. Traveller is just not a simulation with all bases covered.

Honestly, that's one of the things I love about it - makes me rub a couple of neurons together in the hope of generating heat and light.

I think if you want to consider starship food, the best thing to look it is however the boomer submarines manage it on their 60 day tours. I imagine they use every trick in the book (and as I understand it, the food is pretty good on submarines some of the best in the Navy).

Stop thinking like a Solomani.

 

[Condottiere]

Outside of that pan immunity shot, starship food is likely to be bland, because not everything grown on an extra terrestrial planet is going to agree with all humanity, and worse, you might be allergic to it.

 

[casquilho]

When I think about what the food might be like on a ship, I always figure it will depend on where they landed and took off from and how long it has been sense they were at a really good port. I figure the first few days the food could be ok, stuff picked up from the port before they left. But as time goes by, the "fresh" stuff would both run out and go bad depending on time. So now it is powdered milk, TVP, canned foods or other freeze-dried stuff. Less and less stuff you can salvage in the kitchen.

But that is why in my game I suggested and every once in a while, bring up personal and ship spice stashes. Personal hot sauce bottle. Ship's stash of canned fruit or SPAM like meat. Stuff the character likes. Hard Candy of some kind. Personal Honey (never goes bad). Something that would be seen and even traded among crew and ships.

 

[Spinward Flow]

When I think about what the food might be like on a ship, I always figure it will depend on where they landed and took off from and how long it has been sense they were at a really good port. I figure the first few days the food could be ok, stuff picked up from the port before they left. But as time goes by, the "fresh" stuff would both run out and go bad depending on time. So now it is powdered milk, TVP, canned foods or other freeze-dried stuff. Less and less stuff you can salvage in the kitchen.

Hence why I've been on a regenerative biome life support laboratory research kick for almost 2 years now, searching for the "ideal" ACS design intended for tramp free trading out along the fringes of settled spaces, where you need to keep things "low tech" (TL=9-A) in order to have the widest possible industrial supply chains for parts, spares and maintenance support out on the frontier.

Definitely NOT something that the RAW concerned itself with in the slightest (especially during the run of CT) ... but it definitely IS something that I'm interested in, since it has all kinds of "crew security" implications that deepen the immersion into the Simulation™ potential of Traveller (which isn't exactly amenable to hard and fast universal rules, but which house rules can address quite adequately).

 

[Dragoner]

No open flames onboard!

Tell it to NASA, that is the same answer I got from a propulsion engineer here. Though they recycle most of the water on the ISS. There was a nice graphic of water usage on their site, though I don't know anymore.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Though they recycle most of the water on the ISS.

"Yesterday's coffee is today's coffee and will become tomorrow's coffee."

Let that sink seep in.

 

[Badenov]

"Yesterday's coffee is today's coffee and will become tomorrow's coffee."

Let that sink seep in.

At least it's getting boiled.

 

[Grav_Moped]

"Yesterday's coffee is today's coffee and will become tomorrow's coffee."

Let that sink seep in.

Lots of things there that you can drink
But stay away from the kitchen sink
The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay
They drink at lunch in San Jose

Leher, T. (1967) "Pollution"

(Note: lyrics as performed here are slightly different from those quoted, which were the version on That Was The Year That Was.)

 

[Dragoner]

"Yesterday's coffee is today's coffee and will become tomorrow's coffee."

Let that sink seep in.

Bauhaus had a song about it: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3458764513820549853/

Do you feel thirsty now? lol

 

[PVernon]

Just date my self, I loved that show. I saw them all the year that it was on the TV. (That Was The Year That Was)

 

[Spinward Scout]

3D-TV Dinners?

Oh yeah! Replicators would be awesome!

 

[Grav_Moped]

Just date my self, I loved that show. I saw them all the year that it was on the TV. (That Was The Year That Was)

My parents had that record (at least a few others as well). Me? A few months before my time... (yes, that's a date marker too.)