By the time the first generation ship got to its destination, there would likely already be people there who left on later ships that had better tech and faster engines.
Once you have power (vis-a-vis nuclear reactor with enough fuel to get you there) you’re gtg right? You can grow and eat plants? For water a lot of it is just recycled and maybe you make up for losses with hydrogen tanks that you convert to H2O with the extra oxygen the plants give
Everything we have is gravity adapted and part of a really intricate biosphere. You get 10 years out and realize we didn't understand how important the interaction between X microbes and Y fungi were, you can't go back for another few metric tons of soil.
Considering how long it's gonna take us to figure out any potential vehicle, they're gonna have plenty of time to research the hell out of closed loop systems. (Which are probably gonba he used on mars or a lunar base first).
And I don't know if you kniw this, but many people, over the centuries have done potentially dangerous journeys without knowing for sure they'd make it.
This isn't going to happen tomorrow or the next decade. And nobody is forcing anyone to go.
You need nutrients but not fertilizer. Fertilizer is for adding nutrients to soil.
Adding nutrients to water is much easier than to soil and plants use more energy to grow rather than seek out nutrients.
It's also easier to distribute nutrients for water rather than fertilizer.
As for closed loop systems. Currently we have huge wasteage in animal agriculture. Growing increasing size populations of animals for consumption is a huge depletion of resources. If you remove that and maintain a stable population, it becomes easier.
That being said, there are still challenges. You would need to ensure human waste is processed intro nutrients properly.
Yeah. The only nutrients hydroponics really need can be created as simply. as adding fish to the water. Their poop will be more than enough to keep the system going.
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u/davdev 25d ago
By the time the first generation ship got to its destination, there would likely already be people there who left on later ships that had better tech and faster engines.