Re: food from space

On Apr 24, 2:12 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 24, 3:36 am, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On 24 Apr, 00:59, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

NASA did studies on space colonies back in the 1970s and 80s.  Gerard
O'Neill wrote on them in The High Frontier.

http://space.mike-combs.com/SCTHF.html

The costs do not take into account the ability of developing the
technology more gradually in a way that sees it more of an investment
that earns profits, which are then re-invested in technology
development.

One interesting finding was that farms in space support 40,500 people
per square kilometer at US per capita levels of consumption.  This
amounts to 730 kg per person per year.   To fee 6.6 billion people at
this level requires 162,963 square kilometers of pressure vessel
area.

103,745 spheres each 1 km in diameter each housing a spinning cylinder
707 meters in diameter and 707 meters deep, support 1.57 square
kilometers of growing area - each supporting 63,585 persons.

Each satellite has a rail gun and fires 2 meals per second - to people
all over the Earth aided by low cost GPS guidance systems and ceramic
aerogel thermal protection systems with aerodynamic features.  MEMs
based rockets forming a propulsive skin to execute a soft landing at
the desired location for each meal.  Terminal velocity of the aerogel
encased meal is about 200 m/sec following re-entry - which requires a
propellant fraction of 4.3% or 30.4 grams of propellant for a 700 gram
meal.  The rail gun fires it to the targeting envelope and the kinetic
energy and tail fins of the falling meal are adjusted to bring it to a
precise GPS cooerdinate. A solid state doppler radar determines
precise altitude to ignite the engines, and bring the meal to a halt
at zero altitude at the desired location.

90% of the world's population live in 10% if the world's land surface.
I thin that perhaps a more cost effective solution would be to grow
food on part of the 90% of land surface. Deserts which consitute 30%
of the world's land is a good candidate.

A far better solution therefore would be to export microwaves - not
food and use the energy to desalinate sea water. This would have to
compete of course with terrestrial solar power. We have I think
already discussed the pros and cons. As a European my focus tends to
be the Mediteranean, the Middle East and N Africa rather then the
South West although any remarks I have made is equally applicable.
Deserts if watered are amazingly fertile.

There is one snag with the scheme which you propose and that is that
is that you need to transport water and CO2 to your space stations. If
you had pure recycling this problem would not arise.

My proposal therefore is a canal/pipeline to take water from the
Mediteranean across Lebanon to Damascus. If we were to have peace, and
a joint project would help cement peace, canals could go through
Israel. Solar power, initially terrestrial, would be used to
desalinate Med water thereby opening up vast areas for agriculture.
The dry fountains in Damascus have left an impression on me,
particularly when the energy from 2 or 3 roofs would be enough to
supply them with water.

I feel all told this is a far better bet.

  - Ian Parker

Don't bother informing our lord all-knowing willie.moo of such
perfectly viable terrestrial alternatives that wouldn't cost us 0.1%
as much as for going off-world.  Seems our willie.moon doesn't care
how spendy energy, food, housing, education and medical care gets,
because he is set for life no matters how spendy his survival gets.
. - Brad Guth- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Nothing is stopping you from feeding the world by making the deserts
bloom Brad. Go out and do it, and then come back and tell us how easy
it was!

Fact is, humanity is doing all it can to grow as much food as it can
with the resources at its disposal.

Since the productivity of farms in space are about 10x greater than
the productivity of even the best run terrestrial farms, when the cost
of surface area in space drops below the cost of land area on Earth,
it will be cheaper to grow food on orbit than on Earth.

Since a satellite in polar orbit overflies every point on Earth twice
a day, and since it takes less energy to deorbit a mass than to ship
it even 100 miles, and since a satellite is easily hailed anywhere on
earth by radio, and since very simple GPS guided articles can be
precisely landed anywhere on the planet from a polar orbit, once you
have farms and forests and factories on orbit, they will outclass any
terrestrial facility in level of service and access to market. That
is even if you could make the deserts bloom more cheaply than building
farms on orbit - which you cannot - your economics would be ruined by
the logistical nightmare of shipping your products to market before
they rotted away.

Consider a head of lettuce grown in California and consumed in say New
York. It takes a certain amount of time material and attention to
grow well. Then it is picked cleaned packaged. Then it is transported
and stored locally. Transported and stored centrally. Transported
and stored near point of sale. Transported and displayed at point of
sale. Transported and stored at home. Then, its made into a salad.
The capital equipment associated with all the transport and storage
facilities far and away exceeds the cost of the land, ffarm inputs to
create the lettuce in the first place.

Now consider a head of lettuce grown in polar orbit and consumed at
any point on Earth. It is grown in a facility that costs 1/10th per
unit area that comprable land costs in California. It is grown with
technology that is 10x more productive than terrestrial open air
agriculture. The workers arrive telerobotically, instead of by
automobile, using equipment that costs a fraction of what an
automobile costs. Because the telerobots are especially built, and
because of the unique environment, the capital cost of the equipment
is 1/10th that typically associated with terrestrial farming. When
the lettuce is ready for harvesting, its characteristics are entered
into a database along with the satellite flight path and this is
matched against ALL the people of Earth request for a head of lettuce
in tha time window, and an ejection window is assigned. The lettuce
is harvested, cleaned and packaged in a propulsive aeroshell, and
ejected directly to the end user who then uses it in a salad. The
food - delivered - costs 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost of foods today.
The unlimited availability of resources off-world provide unlimited
scope for expansion - limited only by demand.

So, by getting rid of all those trucks, loading docks, dock workers,
roadways, trains, refrigerated warehouses, even refrigeration in each
home, the cost of actually getting food in your home is dramatically
reduced and reliability is improved while time to market is measured
in minutes instead of weeks.
.

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