Re: food from space

On Apr 24, 4:05 pm, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

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.

Most of humanity isn't doing 90% of what could be easily accomplished,
that is if it were not for the corporate and faith-based restrictions
of those intent upon keeping their off-shore bank accounts stuffed
with our hard earned loot. Obviously you do not care how spendy food
gets.


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.

Nothing is stopping you from feeding the world by making the vacuum
of LEO space bloom Mook. Go out and do it, and then come back and
tell us how easy it was!


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.

Off-world growing of rad-hard food is technically doable and otherwise
spendy as hell, but then so is surviving on Venus where there's no
shortage of locally renewable energy or even water as easily taken
from those acidic clouds. As Venus cools off it becomes more Earth
like, so the geothermal forced environment is already going in the
right direction.

Obtaining salty or fresh water while in LEO isn't going to be cheap or
all the DNA friendly. Hauling tonnes of salt water from Earth to LEO
at $10,000/kg isn't going to get cheaper unless we utilize China or
India CATS, and we both know that Mook isn't having anything to do
with China or India.

In theory water sent to LEO will be 100% efficiently utilized (meaning
no leakage). However, what's your best water efficiency cycle, of
water sent up as opposed to produce that goes back down?

With a billion in USDs, how many acres of high tech greenhouse farms
could be accomplished within India, where we can still get a 10 hour
work shift worth of local labor for as little as a couple bucks (in
some areas make that $1)?
.. - Brad Guth
.

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