SpaceX Mars City Buildings / Plan

[tater]

It would be interesting to see non-tubers.

10 hours ago, mrfox said:

Ironically written by someone called “tater”

I'm no cannibal!

Maybe that's why I'm not wanting to move to Mars.

1500 g of protein per ha per day? That's kinda horrible, they need some meat, honestly. Dunno how more dense growing conditions could improve that, but 1500g of protein is 1-2 week's worth for 1 person. 10,000m² is a lot of farming area to grow food for 7-14 people for a couple weeks (or am I reading that wrong?).

Edited February 28, 2021 by tater

[YNM]

48 minutes ago, tater said:

1500 g of protein per ha per day? That's kinda horrible, they need some meat, honestly.

I think the easiest animal husbandry might be aquaculture, barring anything much more radical like lab-grown meat or such.

[mrfox]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

I think the easiest animal husbandry might be aquaculture, barring anything much more radical like lab-grown meat or such.

Terrestrial insects might potentially be easier to farm for protein - just grind it up as protein powder if palatability is an issue.

Realistically it’ll probably be cheaper to import the essential nutritional requirements, and mix with locally grown bulk for calories. 

[StrandedonEarth]

For protein, I believe @cubinatorwould have something to say about crickets...?

Sorta ninja’d  as I was typing on my phone... 

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And you need a lot of pumps, pipes, and still thick glass roofs for that hydroponics.
That's why they still grow crops on plowlands rather in comfy and controllable hydroponic farms.

Hydroponics is nice if you grow vegetables or algae. With crops and potatoes it looks expensive.

The things which you need in much lesser amounts than crops/potatoes.

***

I can see a lot of futuristic pictures and inedible green leaves _ботва in this doc, but neither any calculations, nor any descriptions of at least what they are farming, actually nothing but another eco-village fancy trash.

Of course, no animals. Who needs that meat?
(The meat needs several times more plants to grow).

Also, as I can understand, they haven't run any isolation experiment.

→ /dev/null

Any actual serious project with a barn full of actually grown potatoes?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

On earth hydroponics make little sense outside of labs there you want to breed plants and control everything. Farmland is pretty cheap. 
Yes you can probably grow lecture hydroponics and locally but economical and environmentally flying them in from the other side of the world is probably just as well. 
Meat and fish can be frozen, grains and root vegetables stores well. Fruits and salads is that you want fresh. 
In the 1st world it was more farmland 100 years ago than today, however lots of it was poor performance or cold not be worked by tractors and got dropped, some into pasture other to forest, plenty of pasture was also dropped as it was low quality and to small for economical use. Its also more forest than 100 years ago. 

Yes on mars transport cost is some magnitudes more expensive than air freight today, note that this is also true for leo or moon.

[tater]

10 minutes ago, mrfox said:

Terrestrial insects might potentially be easier to farm for protein - just grind it up as protein powder if palatability is an issue.

Yeah, I've eaten some insects (intentionally), and they're not bad, but it would be a cultural change for many.

 

10 minutes ago, mrfox said:

Realistically it’ll probably be cheaper to import the essential nutritional requirements, and mix with locally grown bulk for calories. 

Certainly early on (again, I'm "drinking the self-sufficient colony Kool-Aid" for the sake of argument), but eventually they need to not depend on Earth at all.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, mrfox said:

Terrestrial insects might potentially be easier to farm for protein - just grind it up as protein powder if palatability is an issue.

Problem is you do need to clean them and stuff. That's probably why most people aren't very big on them. But it is a possible alternative.

With fish you also need to clean them but they're not minuscule in size. (although for anchovies we do cook them just like that.)

Edited February 28, 2021 by YNM

[mrfox]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Just redistributes the nitrogen and alcali metals, it doesn't provide them.
So, the fishes are handy to use on the watered planet, but not bring something to the chemical cycle. And they eat the calories instead of you.

You anyway should bind the atmospheric nitrogen and replenish the elements sucked out by the grown plants.

So, you anyway need either crop rotation (to replenish the soil with nutrients, slowly and not massively), or a synthetic ammonia (all heil Fritz Haber) plant.
Since XX cent. both, because the former is  much less productive.
The modern situation when 3% of population feeds other 97% is only thanks to the chemical industry. The modern agriculture is just its addon.

Interesting point - I am surprised at how much nitrogen the cycle can lose due to off-gassing.

https://nutrientstewardship.org/implementation/nitrogen-loss-pathways-which-is-yours/
 

If rainfall, irrigation (>1/2 in. within a few days after application), or tillage do not soil incorporate surface-applied urea or urea-containing N fertilizers within a few days after application, ammonia volatilization (gaseous loss as ammonia) may range from 20 to 40% of the N applied, and rival N losses from leaching and drainage.
 

Gaseous loss of N from soils as nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas affecting climate change), through nitrification and denitrification processes, is often <2 to 8 lbs of N/A in humid regions and may be <1 to 2 lbs/A in less humid regions (e.g. west of the Mississippi River).

 

[cubinator]

Regarding insects - Yes, they're as good a choice as you'll get for Martian animal protein. You can farm them without much hassle in a small space, and to prepare them all you need to do is freeze them and dry them. Then you can powder them if you want to use as a flour. They eat pretty much the same stuff we will be growing on Mars anyway, and can be supplemented with dry food from Earth on early missions.

Roaches are actually better than crickets in every way except cultural acceptance. A space-worthy device capable of farming them is currently in design.

[tater]

38 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Roaches are actually better than crickets in every way except cultural acceptance. A space-worthy device capable of farming them is currently in design.

I've eaten crickets, grasshoppers, and some really huge Thai waterbug (ground into a paste and mixed with dried chili, pretty delicious) but you're right, I'd have to be in extremis to even think about cockroaches. Well beyond Bear Grylls 2 hours without water extreme

 

[cubinator]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

I've eaten crickets, grasshoppers, and some really huge Thai waterbug (ground into a paste and mixed with dried chili, pretty delicious) but you're right, I'd have to be in extremis to even think about cockroaches. Well beyond Bear Grylls 2 hours without water extreme

 

And, see, you're totally without logical reason for that! The species used for farming (Dubia, for instance) are not the kind which infest human homes, they are just as fine to eat, and taste just like you might expect any other bug to. I don't mean to rag on you, it's something important for me to understand. Would you eat something that had been made from farmed Dubia roach powder - a tortilla, cookie, or otherwise?

[mrfox]

plus pretty much all coffee grounds are full of roach parts. 

same reason no one bats an eyelid at hot dogs either.... its all about the packaging (and lots of seasoning).

[cubinator]

5 minutes ago, mrfox said:

plus pretty much all coffee grounds are full of roach parts. 

same reason no one bats an eyelid at hot dogs either.... its all about the packaging (and lots of seasoning).

One of my teammates suggested today that if we market it as "SPACE FOOD!" everyone will be all over it, and I'm pretty sure they're right.

[tater]

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

And, see, you're totally without logical reason for that! The species used for farming (Dubia, for instance) are not the kind which infest human homes, they are just as fine to eat, and taste just like you might expect any other bug to. I don't mean to rag on you, it's something important for me to understand. Would you eat something that had been made from farmed Dubia roach powder - a tortilla, cookie, or otherwise?

Yeah, I lived in a part of town with lots of them in summer, and I hate the things, but not enough to want to express my hate by consuming them.

I realize it is entirely irrational, if a shrimp crawled out from under the fridge, I might stomp it (though if it was a vinegaroon, I'd let it crawl on my hand and let it go outside)—and inside the freezer? It's dinner. <shrug>

I hate crickets, too—they keep me up if inside my acoustically "live" house (brick floors, wood ceilings, plaster walls)—but there's no disgust factor there like there is from cockroaches. Maybe my mind can be changed since I am aware how irrational it is (and I've eaten other insects not hidden at all, just insects, and some beer (there's usually red chili involved).

 

5 hours ago, mrfox said:

plus pretty much all coffee grounds are full of roach parts. 

Pre-ground coffee tastes like that. My beans are beans, and they get ground a few seconds before they get turned into espresso, never seen any critters

 

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

One of my teammates suggested today that if we market it as "SPACE FOOD!" everyone will be all over it, and I'm pretty sure they're right.

Once it is prepared into "protein powder" I suppose it doesn't matter what it started as, the trouble is that if people found out it was roaches, not sure it would matter.

It needs to be clear—from a marketing standpoint—that it is as far from cockroaches as vegetables are from the manure they were fertilized with. So for the processed insect protein, you might be able to do this.

[kerbiloid]

 

20 hours ago, YNM said:

It's only partly because of we didn't have the methods to separate them from the toxic/infectious part of the waste.

It was used millenia before somebody worried about the waste toxicity, that's a pure modern topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterquilinus

12 hours ago, tater said:

10,000m² is a lot of farming area to grow food

Food. When you can buy everything other and have the chemical industry.
But you also need cattle (so, roughly, 10 kg of grown food per kg of meat), cellulose for clothes, towels, and various needs, alcohol, chemicals, etc.

So, in total ~0.1 ha to survive, ~1 ha to live.

1 ha is just ~3 t of organics per year for all these needs, ~10 kg/day.

9 hours ago, mrfox said:

Terrestrial insects might potentially be easier to farm for protein - just grind it up as protein powder if palatability is an issue

My main doubt in the insects is that Chinese peasants are used to consume them as snacks, so definitely would not be shocked by eating them as meat, but for some reasons they still prefer to grow pigs and chickens, even during the known events of mid-XX cent, and nobody forced them.

Also I never heard about locust farms in the Middle East, while it's allowed to all of them.

So, probably there are some real troubles with the insect food, not mentioned by "eco"propaganda.

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Meat and fish can be frozen, grains and root vegetables stores well. Fruits and salads is that you want fresh. 

All of them should be grown first.
And the fruits are easily frozen or conserved. the storing is not a big problem.

6 hours ago, tater said:

I've eaten crickets, grasshoppers, and some really huge Thai waterbug (ground into a paste and mixed with dried chili, pretty delicious) but you're right, I'd have to be in extremis to even think about cockroaches.

At least some fauna can feel safe around your lair...
Probably the insects are scaring their kids with a huge monster hunting and eating them all...

If you have some useless wood around, you can farm termites for free.

But anyway, the bear grills would taste better.

9 minutes ago, tater said:

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

One of my teammates suggested today that if we market it as "SPACE FOOD!" everyone will be all over it, and I'm pretty sure they're right.

Once it is prepared into "protein powder"

and sold next to the gyms...

(With a cricket with barbell on the cover.)

Edited March 1, 2021 by kerbiloid

[mrfox]

 

 

[kerbiloid]

That's how they invented the blood sausage.

P.S.
They don't herd the mosquitoes, they utilize the existing ones.
They don't herd special cows to let them be sucked by the mosquitoes, don't spend the plowland on food for such cows.
They still herd vertebrates to eat.

P.P.S.
The Platform / El hoyo (2019) represents another kind of edible insects to detoxicate their food substrate, but it's probably rated, idk.

Edited March 1, 2021 by kerbiloid