Colonising Mars and a meme I found

[Cassel]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

You can use vertical farming for insane yield for m^2, this makes little sense on earth as its both capital and manpower intensive while farmland is cheap. 
In space you will grow fresh vegetables as you want fresh tomatoes and salad. You import grains and frozen meat, you can probably do do fish to but import other fish. 
 
 

What is the efficiency of such farms on Earth?
What will be the performance on Mars, where less sunlight reaches?
How much m^2 do you need to feed 100 people?
How many people of these 100 would have to work as farmers?

I'm asking seriously, because I have not seen such calculations anywhere, and this is probably the basis if one thinks of a base on an other planet.

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

You can use vertical farming for insane yield for m^2, this makes little sense on earth as its both capital and manpower intensive while farmland is cheap. 
In space you will grow fresh vegetables as you want fresh tomatoes and salad. You import grains and frozen meat, you can probably do do fish to but import other fish. 
 
 

You don't even need vertical farming for ridiculous yields. Fine tuning the environment can net enormous yields. A permanent growing season is also a major benefit. Having virtually no pests helps, too. Aero or hydroponics is also generally more efficient.

Of course you need environmental control...

[kerbiloid]

Hydroponic vats with post-animal GMO unicellular culture as a basic food paste. 

Other hydroponic vats with fast-growing algae to make compost and to convert it into fertilizer for that basic unicellular culture.

Synthetic fats, cellulose, aromatizers, pygments, sweeteners, etc, to turn the basic food paste into various food products.
(And of course, the god of kitchen - Monosodium Glutamate quantum satis.)

In fact you need only proteins to be grown. Just too much headache with their proper synthesis.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Xd the great]

8 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Hydroponic vats with post-animal GMO unicellular culture as a basic food paste. 

Other hydroponic vats with fast-growing algae to make compost and to convert it into fertilizer for that basic unicellular culture.

Synthetic fats, cellulose, aromatizers, pygments, sweeteners, etc, to turn the basic food paste into various food products.
(And of course, the god of kitchen - Monosodium Glutamate quantum satis.)

In fact you need only proteins to be grown. Just too much headache with their proper synthesis.

And protein can be grown on bugs, should they eat algae.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

And protein can be grown on bugs, should they eat algae.

Animals have too much useless parts (bones, feathers, hair, inedible tissues, nerves).
If remove these parts, the animal turns into a meat bag.
It's better,, as you can just stick two pipes into it from the opposite ends.
But still not the best, as it has to grow, and its cells differ because they grow in different conditions. And it can be ill.

So, making a unicellular chickenpig chimaera should give more mass per time, similar standard cells, and filtering out the ill cells.

Also it totally removes ethical problems. All hums get vegans while eating the meat.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[ChrisSpace]

19 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Saw this and it made me think. Thoughts?

The Antarctic Treaty is still a thing that exists.

19 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Should we be thinking of colonising places on Earth, perhaps not literally Antarctica, but maybe areas of Siberia, Canada etc. before we realistically consider colonising Mars?

Those places are already colonised, with countless small settlements.

18 hours ago, Scotius said:

But... what if a 'dinosaur killer' class asteroid or a comet comes a-knocking one day? It would be good for humanity to have a backup somewhere safe, hmmm?

Ugggghhh, not this again:

First of all, every asteroid capable of causing any global biosphere damage has already been discovered and has had it's orbit mapped to the point where a potential impact with Earth within the next few centuries has been ruled out (and a 0.01% chance of impact shouldn't be considered "potential").

Second, even if no asteroids at all had their orbits mapped, the probability of such an impact happening within the next million years is negligible, and within the next few thousand years is effectively zero.

Third, even if a large enough asteroid or comet really was on an impact course with Earth, it would've been detected at least a year (more likely several years) before impact, leaving plenty of opportunity to plan, launch and perform multiple attempts to redirect it's path.

Fourth, even if this scenario happened, every attempt failed and the world ended, the surviving population after the Impact Winter would still be far higher than the population of a colonised moon or Mars.

[YNM]

1 minute ago, ChrisSpace said:

The Antarctic Treaty is still a thing that exists. 

I thought there's a similar treaty for Mars ?

[Cassel]

5 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

 

Ugggghhh, not this again:

 

First of all, every asteroid capable of causing any global biosphere damage has already been discovered and has had it's orbit mapped to the point where a potential impact with Earth within the next few centuries has been ruled out (and a 0.01% chance of impact shouldn't be considered "potential").

Third, even if a large enough asteroid or comet really was on an impact course with Earth, it would've been detected at least a year (more likely several years) before impact, leaving plenty of opportunity to plan, launch and perform multiple attempts to redirect it's path.

 

Oumuamua undermines these two points?

[ChrisSpace]

3 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Oumuamua undermines these two points?

My second and fourth still apply

[kerbiloid]

What's easier: to change an asteroid orbit or to move an asteroid of ground on Mars and goods to Mars?

[Cassel]

Just now, ChrisSpace said:

My second and fourth still apply

Not true, the second point is an assumption for which you have no evidence. It is your wishful thinking. In fact, Oumuamua also undermines this point, because we do not know where it came from and whether the next one is not flying behind her in a similar course.

The fourth point in a sense agrees, because the entire population of the Earth will not go away so fast, but in the event of such a catastrophe, we will kill ourselves for the remains of food.

[Green Baron]

 

Those rocks <1km don't impose any global risk. Here is a statistic (NASA Center for NEOs) that shows the curve for boulders >1km is nearly level, there are only very few new discoveries. The curve for the ones in between 1km and 140m, which could potentially have regional consequences is beginning to turn east as well.

The smaller ones ... well a reminder like Chelyabinsk every now and then might keep people enthusiastic at work :-)

Edited October 2, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Martian penguins.
It's cold where they live, it's probably easy to herd them, they are amphibian things, so are used both to gravity and zero-G.
They are vertical, so occupy not much place personally.
They should be tried as a basic species for the extraterrestrial  bases.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Animals have too much useless parts (bones, feathers, hair, inedible tissues, nerves).
If remove these parts, the animal turns into a meat bag.
It's better,, as you can just stick two pipes into it from the opposite ends.
But still not the best, as it has to grow, and its cells differ because they grow in different conditions. And it can be ill.

So, making a unicellular chickenpig chimaera should give more mass per time, similar standard cells, and filtering out the ill cells.

Also it totally removes ethical problems. All hums get vegans while eating the meat.

Or you could just grow soybeans. They can be grown hydroponically,  they're a complete source of protein and plants are a heck of a lot easier to grow and maintain than your cultured cell goop. We also have rather a lot of experience in turning soymeal into more palatable foodstuffs and of cooking with those foodstuffs. Despite its genetic background, I would be astonished if your chimaera ends up tasting much like either meat, at which point you've basically lost its sole advantage over soy.

Growing soy also gives you the incidental psychological benefits of having greenery around and of having actual living things to take care of. Plus the plants contribute to your CO2 scrubbing systems. 

As for colonising Mars as a backup option in case of asteroid strike - I'm with whoever said 'why not both'. For the foreseeable future, I don't see a Mars outpost being anywhere near self sufficient, ergo if Earth loses the capacity to send supplies to Mars then the 'colonists' are doomed anyway. Having Mars as a second cradle for humanity is such a long game plan that you probably also want to have a way of deflecting that '0.01% probability in the next couple of centuries' impactor.

As a personal aside, I find the notion of a year or two being sufficient to plan, build and launch an asteroid redirection mission to be hopelessly optimistic. Humanity as a whole is simply too divided, selfish, resistant to change and distrustful of those giving unpalatable advice, to have a hope in heck of doing anything about an asteroid strike.

Besides, even assuming that my cynicism is unwarranted,  all of our proposed methods for asteroid deflection work better if we have as much time as possible to implement them.

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, KSK said:

Or you could just grow soybeans.

Plants have a lot of useless parts, too. A steam, leaves, roots. The grain itself also is not totally edible.
The plant spends a lot of resources to grow them, the plant can be ill.
So, a unicellular soybean is also an option.

But as a soybean doesn't ideally match the meat protein, it should be GMOed with animal genes.
So, a unicellular chickenpig soybean is nice.

17 minutes ago, KSK said:

Plus the plants contribute to your CO2 scrubbing systems. 

Until they die, and you have to spend oxygen to utilize them.
The more inedible parts has a plant - the more oxygen is to be spent with no benefit.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Cassel]

32 minutes ago, KSK said:

Or you could just grow soybeans. They can be grown hydroponically

May I ask few questions?

What is the efficiency of such farms on Earth?
What will be the performance on Mars, where less sunlight reaches?
How much m^2 do you need to feed 100 people?
How many people of these 100 would have to work as farmers?

[Green Baron]

Good questions. I can't answer any of these, i am not a biologist nor a hydroponics farmer. I doubt any one can since nobody knows about the availability of water and nutrients on Mars yet.

I would not want to consume soy beans alone. I am an omnivorous organism i am :-)

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I would not want to consume soy beans alone. I am an omnivorous organism i am :-)

No problem, they've offered bugs.

4 hours ago, Xd the great said:

And protein can be grown on bugs

 

I hope you don't have anything against beans with bugs?

[Xd the great]

19 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

No problem, they've offered bugs.

 

I hope you don't have anything against beans with bugs?

Staple food on Mars. Canned beanes with bugs.

Geez. Look at the proteins. We will soon have a new type of homo sapiens that evloves to eat meat.

[p1t1o]

Probably a lot of food will be grown in vats, similar to "Quorn". No sunlight required, only warm nutrient broth and oxygen. (its essentially mushroom)

[Xd the great]

2 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Probably a lot of food will be grown in vats, similar to "Quorn". No sunlight required, only warm nutrient broth and oxygen. (its essentially mushroom)

Beans, bugs, fungus. With potatoes. Nice.

[Cassel]

It says that 4 people need about 2 acres garden to feed themselves on Earth. If that is correct 100 people on Mars would need more than 50 acres (about 202 342 square meters) pressurized space, good luck with that :-)

https://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/how-much-land-is-needed-to-be-self-sufficient

[kerbiloid]

A estimation known to me is ~1 ha/human to be happy. So, more or less the same.

***

About the unicellular food.

Making fats, cellulose, and spices synthetically doesn't require the Sun light, they would be just a by-product of mass organic synthesis (i.e. of fuel and plastic industry).

A unicellular chickenpig soybean is of course chemosynthetic. It doesn't need the sun, too.

So, the only sun-loving part would be the photosynthetic algae (say, the famous chlorella), in amounts much lesser than if grow them as main food, because they are just fertilizer for chemosynthetics.

This means there will be no difference with sun, polar night, or underground growing.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

4 hours ago, Cassel said:

May I ask few questions?

What is the efficiency of such farms on Earth?
What will be the performance on Mars, where less sunlight reaches?
How much m^2 do you need to feed 100 people?
How many people of these 100 would have to work as farmers?

Good questions. I don’t have any special insights to offer other than anything I - or you - could find online. I’m wondering whether you could make things slightly easier by not having your ‘farmland’ be a shirtsleeves environment (easier to build something that only needs to withstand enough of an atmosphere to sustain plantlife), or whether that would be more trouble than it’s worth.

But yes, I agree with you. Having enough living space and being able to produce air, food and water are pretty basic first steps to a self-sustaining colony - and they’re all pretty formidable problems in their own right.

Growing crops wouldn’t be without its problems (growing space being a very significant one) but I still think they beat, or are at least competitive with the alternatives that have been proposed here.

A ‘meat for meat’s sake’ system where you’re producing one nutrient source purely to feed it to a second nutrient source is, in my view, too wasteful of space and resources to be a good option. Especially as I doubt it’s even going to produce anything that much resembles actual animal meat. I could maybe see the psychological benefit (if not the nutritional benefit) to creating actual grillable meat on-site, but if all you’re producing is bizarro protein paste, then I just don’t see the point in not going with vegetable proteins in the first place.

Unicellular foodstuffs, whether they be Quorn-alikes or genetically engineered chicken/pig/algae/t-rex hybrids, still take space to produce, will probably need to be cultured under fairly stringent conditions to avoid contamination with other microorganisms, and will probably also require considerable processing to turn the raw cell-stuff into food. Go look up the Wikipedia article on Quorn for an example of the sort of things that would be involved.

Purely synthetic food produced through bulk chemical synthesis seems...complicated and inefficient with waste products that are unlikely to be much use for anything.

For my money, you want a chain of foodstuffs, where each is edible in its own right and in which the waste material from growing and processing one foodstuff can be used to grow another. As an off-the-cuff example:

Hydroponically grown soy beans are processed into soymeal. The waste husks are ground up and used as a substrate for growing mushrooms. Whatever’s left after that is mixed with the waste foliage from bean production and composted down to be mixed with regolith and biowaste from the colonists. Conveniently, the perchlorates in that regolith are a pretty good source of chlorine for sterilising the biowaste. 

Net products - decent soil for growing more food and two foodstuffs, both of which are relatively low maintenance to grow (compared to vat grown food), and one of which can be cooked and eaten directly.

I have no idea how practical that particular example would be but a system working on similar principles would be the way forward in my opinion.

Edited October 2, 2018 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Unicellular foodstuffs ... will probably also require considerable processing to turn the raw cell-stuff into food.

Any raw material would require a lot of processing. Just some of them for the growing, others - for the processing.
But chemistry is easier and more computable than biology, so the more pure chemistry - the less headache with biology. And less people required to feed others.
 

1 hour ago, KSK said:

will probably need to be cultured under fairly stringent conditions to avoid contamination with other microorganisms

One of the greatest reasons to use as less biology as possible. Anycellular.

And unlike the farm you can sterilize the ill vat with gamma, wash it with chemicals, and get new portion of food much sooner than if you burn a field or massacre a farm.
You don't need a year until a pig gets grown, or two for a calf.

Why the humans have chosen grass with grain  instead of trees with fruits?
Probably they couldn't await for years.

Edited October 2, 2018 by kerbiloid