Indoor farming is fine if you want salad, but so far I haven't seen any solutions that really offer realistic calories-per-area efficiency. No one that I know of, for example, is growing corn or wheat indoors on a massive scale, and I'm not sure if doing so is even practical. I'm guessing that it will be quite a while before we can get common staple plants to provide the nutritional density of something like spirulina (no matter how terrible it actually tastes).
"with his passion for farm to table food, and food prep, and agricultural production, and his passion about how integral these sorts of food experiences are to life..."As a board member of SpaceX, what does you know about the thinking at SpaceX for ensuring that the early traveler's to Mars are going to benefit from this sort of philosophical approach to food growing, prep, and eating, even if bits of fresh food would be grown in indoor spaces?"
...Electric has been adequate as transport for a technological civilisation for decades but still totally unrealistic here on earth when someone could just buy a petrol car....
Quote from: KelvinZero on 10/10/2018 12:14 am...Electric has been adequate as transport for a technological civilisation for decades but still totally unrealistic here on earth when someone could just buy a petrol car....I don't know where the heck you're going with this analogy, but this is really wrong right now. It's not even close to "still totally unrealistic" to get an electric car. In fact, the total cost of ownership is about the same, possibly even lower. I own two electric cars and bought them each for $10,000 used. They're fantastic cars, and any premium I paid on them vs petrol is easily paid for by the amount I'm saving in gasoline, oil changes, brakes, and the time needed to do each of those.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/10/2018 03:08 amQuote from: KelvinZero on 10/10/2018 12:14 am...Electric has been adequate as transport for a technological civilisation for decades but still totally unrealistic here on earth when someone could just buy a petrol car....I don't know where the heck you're going with this analogy, but this is really wrong right now. It's not even close to "still totally unrealistic" to get an electric car. In fact, the total cost of ownership is about the same, possibly even lower. I own two electric cars and bought them each for $10,000 used. They're fantastic cars, and any premium I paid on them vs petrol is easily paid for by the amount I'm saving in gasoline, oil changes, brakes, and the time needed to do each of those.Don't be so jumpy. I can see my use of the word "still" was a bit ambiguous but you leapt to an absurd, frankly insulting interpretation. Give me some credit. I simply meant that:"for decades (electric cars were adequate but still totally unable to be an option.)"NOT"for decades electric cars were adequate, and they are still totally not an option"The fact is, our civilisation could have been redesigned to run around electric cars in the 70s.. except they would not sell, making them "totally unrealistic". We even put one on the moon.
Offworld hydroponics and aquaculture have alsi been extensively covered in the Scaling Agriculture on Mars thread, including the power needs for large containerized gardens which have been commercialized. 1,289 posts worth to date.