Space Ship based Hydroponics

[Dangerious P. Cats]

In various sci fi you have space ships with hydroponic food gardens but I'm wondering how viable such a thing would be. I guess the question should be devided into two parts, firstly how viable would one be to build on purpose (like the food ships in BattleStar Galactica) and how difficult would it be to improvise one together (like in Stargate Universe) and what supplies/technologies would you need to do so and how could you improvise without them?

[Nogford]

It's very viable. There are several species of vegetable that actually grow far better in low gravity than on Earth. I don't know about ships specifically dedicated to growing food, but the technology required for hydroponics is very simple - heat and light, plus some sort of rack to keep the nutrient-laden water and plants in.

Any spaceship with a fabricator would be able to set up a hydroponic farm, provided they had the space.

[walkir]

AFAIK, real world astronauts watch salad (or whatever they have up there) grow for hours a time when there's nothing to do, and it even helps morale. Can't find the link on the moment, though.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Nogford

Any spaceship with a fabricator would be able to set up a hydroponic farm, provided they had the space.

Well, plus a source of water, nutrients, lights with enough brightness in the blue to drive photosynthesis and, probably the most difficult one, viable seeds. Hydroponics is not a difficult or expensive technology to implement - there are commercial greenhouses that make money at it, at least notionally competing with open field agriculture - but it does require stuff that probably isn't lying around on a *spaceship* that wasn't planning on it. And the last little bit to fully close a life support loop is so far pretty difficult - it takes more weight of equipment to close the last fraction of a percent than it does to store a lifetime supply of those last few micronutrients.

[Nogford]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Well, plus a source of water, nutrients, lights with enough brightness in the blue to drive photosynthesis and, probably the most difficult one, viable seeds. Hydroponics is not a difficult or expensive technology to implement - there are commercial greenhouses that make money at it, at least notionally competing with open field agriculture - but it does require stuff that probably isn't lying around on a *spaceship* that wasn't planning on it. And the last little bit to fully close a life support loop is so far pretty difficult - it takes more weight of equipment to close the last fraction of a percent than it does to store a lifetime supply of those last few micronutrients.

I'm not sure what TL is intended, but closing the life support loop would be pretty trivial from TL10 onwards.

[DaltonS]

I'm more interested in hydroponic gardens as habitat cabin replacements. Total life support doubles the size of cabins and bunkrooms but GURPS Spaceships doesn't explicitly say if hydroponics is part of that. And even if the accomodations already have total LS, a few fresh veggies make a nice supplement to space rations. How much would something like that cost?

Dalton "being a locavore in space is tough" Spence

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by DaltonS

I'm more interested in hydroponic gardens as habitat cabin replacements. Total life support doubles the size of cabins and bunkrooms but GURPS Spaceships doesn't explicitly say if hydroponics is part of that. And even if the accomodations already have total LS, a few fresh veggies make a nice supplement to space rations. How much would something like that cost?

Dalton "being a locavore in space is tough" Spence

Call it an Open Space system.