jterlecki wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 4:52 pm
I was thinking not in terms of lifespan, but in terms of supplies (food/water/breathable air) which I could easily see running out before power does.
Water an air are already assumed to be ≈ 100% recyclable in a spaceship environment - it's perfectly achievable even at our tech level (though are consumables for recovery run bad rather quickly - but we're talking about top-notch equipment of a civilization that was way ahead of even XXII century mankind for a long, long time now), and having to deal with any significant amount of waste water and building up carbon dioxide on a months-long spaceflight is bonkers, compared to recovering it. Plus:
Forum Quotations Vol. I, ch XXXIII wrote:
I'm not so sure that a 3-month supply of water is out of the question, but regardless, a spacecraft is a closed system. The only way you could "lose" water is if you dump it overboard. The vast majority of consumed water is going to come out with the waste, and this is all recoverable.
Food is trickier, buuuuut:
Forum Quotations Vol. I, ch XXXIII wrote:
Starships at this tech level no doubt have very effective methods of food preservation, but fresh food is probably still going to be desirable. Large ships like Tempest can afford space for a small garden for growing small amounts of fresh food; in particular, fungi would be an ideal food to grow on board ship, allowing you to turn waste into food without even requiring sunlight. I do have a short scene planned in the Tempest grow room where they have these huge, phosphorescent Perrein fungi all over the place.
I also have another scene planned where they try to introduce Alex to the Loroi equivalent of coffee.
Agreed, I think the vast majority of food aboard a starship would be preserved, and it would probably be pretty decent. But a little fresh vegetable would always be welcome, and the fungi seems essentially "free", except for the space allocated and the water (which is recoverable), it seems like a good use of waste products.
A Loroi spaceship is likely to have an arboretum, which can probably be greatly expanded if the ship ends up stranded.