General What is your most common food or drink in The Third Imperium?
- Thread starter Spinward Scout
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kilemall
SOC-14 5K
When did I say I would be dropping a million colonists? That alone is crazy pants numbers based on tonnage available.
Most initial colonies are going to be small and are exactly experimental stations. Each planet is going to be different and it’s going to initially be about scaling up support and dealing with the inevitable world is trying to kill us stuff.
Otherwise if it’s just a mining or other resource extraction, yes it’s going to be shipped in rations and spacer biome modules. Even so, there will be economic pressure to process whatever it is we’re after into a product that ships out economically.
I think I first read of Amazon agriculture in a work by either Charles C. Mann, or Jared Diamond. The 'pedia has a decent overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_agriculture_in_the_Amazon_BasinThey could do what the Amazon forest ‘settlers’ did- use charcoal, leftover food and pottery shards to make highly rich soil.
Terra preta - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
The discovery that the Amazon rainforest is the remains of a giant polyculture/agroforestry endeavor fascinates me. After reading theories about the reasons for the properties of terra preta, I set up small raised beds with the soil in each amended with manure, compost, rich loam from a friend's garden (for the mycoculture), and either (1) activated charcoal, (2) vermiculite, or (3) sodium polyacrylate. The SPA was amazing in retaining moisture, but I had a heck of a time disposing of it when I discovered it could be a skin and lung irritant when dried out.
I still don't know what the LD-50 is for tomatoes, but I know I was really testing it that year.
So, here's a question, and I don't know.
There's a plot point in the movie "The Martian" where the astronaut (who happens to be a botanist) grows potatoes using (apparently) little more than Martian soil, "fertilizer", and a chunk of potato.
So, was that complete science fiction, or was the fertilizer enough to make the (I assume) dead soil a suitable enough growing medium?
from what I've read, "Not in the time implied..."
Do keep in mind that humans don't extract 100% in the digestive system. And much of the microbial load is not soil microbes... but a few are close relatives.... Given a year? maybe... thrive-or-die. He also had more than just his to work with...
As for the potatoes? that they'd be fresh is a bit of artistic license... and that they'd have the eyes on even more so... unless they had been sent for an experiment. In which case, it'd be just expanding the presumably at least limitedly successful experiment.
The eyes are where the next generation buds from... and are mildly toxic. Removal followed by radiation and shrink wrap, followed by refrigeration at the right temp, and you can have a fresh baked potato a year or two on...
But fresh potatoes have soil microbes... and ones which are compatible with using human waste.
You can grow plants in regolith simulant...
What you cannot do is grow plants in un-augmented regolith simulant.
Nor would I expect to.
I'm sure everything is context dependent. But I guess its a question of weather the alien soil is augment resistant, or is it just "dead" soil. Naturally incompatible for crop growth.
If the soil is hostile, can it be clean? Can you sterilize it? Or is it simply laced with bad compounds "Oh look, arsenic sure it common here!".
If not, then part of the bootstrap operation is to get the local base augmented to sustain growth and, ideally, start getting into a loop where vegetation waste can be composted to be used to augment more soil. I can certainly see perhaps a mineral deficiency in the local soil that would require supplementation, but, hopefully, there will be local sources that can be tapped for that in the long term.
It does not seem practical assuming you have an otherwise T-shirt world, to not be able to transform local plots into a reliable growing medium for compatible food stuffs. In the end, all of our soil started as ground up dead rock, I would think we'd be able to, well, "terraform" select lots of land suitable for crops.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Plants grow perfectly well in artificial soil - no biota in it at all actually prevents infections and disease.
Nutrients are provided as water soluble compounds carefully controlled as to dosage.
Go and study hydroponics, vertical farms etc.
en.wikipedia.org
Nutrients are provided as water soluble compounds carefully controlled as to dosage.
Go and study hydroponics, vertical farms etc.
Vertical farming - Wikipedia
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Robot farmers.
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
Ultimately, any food items which are grown are enriched with minerals, etc, have leached them from the soil in which they're planted.
On Mars, that means plants grown in martian "soil" would leach perchlorate compounds from the soil. That means all the food grown in that would be toxic for humans unless you set up facilities to remove the chemicals before using the soil.
Of course, that adds even more cost and effort to establish even a basic colony.
And, that can happen on any planet we want to colonize. Which means it's yet another level of difficulty to providing actual "coffee" parsecs or more away from Terra.(the original point)
OTOH, if the place is inhabited, it's already got the ability to grow human/Vargr/etc. compatible foodstuffs -- or there couldn't be any inhabitants in the first place.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Assuming we accept the Beltstrike standard for life support, it’s imminently doable to ship the ‘canned’ stuff in. Artificial vat meat/pap, hydroponics sure.
Grow, that might be a luxury.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Or just offshore farming offworld, where you can control the environment in space stations.
All it would take is an advance in propulsion and we'd be towing comets to Mars orbit. Maybe even to Venus. After that, we just need to make those Worlds more livable in whatever way.
I think it was in Schismatrix, they shot comets at Venus, at an angle to induce rotation, pretty cool idea.
Perchlorate is toxic, but readily water soluble.
Ground the soil fine enough, and you can rinse away the perchlorates.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
A common method for getting a fertilizer from something common in nature is to use ground / pulverized basalt.
Lithic Mulching: An Amazing Ancient Gardening Technique to Cope with COVID-19 - Empowering minds
What is lithic mulching? How is a lithic mulch garden constructed? This article explains this ancient technology that can work quite well if you are in
simplyeducate.me
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Have we tried magma post eruption?
