[Spaceships] Total life support

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fish

This is somewhat my point about an emergency supply of food for a given duration. Before we can decide how much space "full life support" consumes, we have to decide what "full life support" actually is.

The way it's used in the Spaceships book suggests it is meant "all food, water, and oxygen supplies can be provided indefinitely, through farming, hydroponics, replication, reclamation, etc." It could well mean "enough life support to last for X number of days, roughly equal to the range of the ship."

Well, that'd be rather problematic considering that it takes the same amount of space regardless of the size and/or range of the ship.

Originally Posted by Fish

To put it another way: there's not much advantage in putting an infinite supply of food on a dinghy; you can't get that far from shore.

Even if that were true, it's sometimes valuable just to be able to sit 'off shore' indefinitely. A TL9 space station gets a lot of benefit out of total life support, but has no range at all. (And can be as small as an SM+5 tin can with a few over-sized habitat modules packed in, if you'll also allow half-cabins or half-bunkrooms.)

And a 'dinghy' with a solar sail can get you right out of the solar system, if you wait long enough.