[gurps] Farming without dry land

[David Scheidt]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Nigel Mccarty-Eigenmann
<n.mccartyeigenmann at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>
>> * The next option is halfway traditional farming
>>   on floating platforms. The published rules for
>>   farm modules are for space stations, 50,000 cf
>>   and 400,000 lbs. per person. Doing it in open
>>   air should be easier, but how much?
>
> Pass.  Much easier I'd think - were you thinking that they would have no
> external input?  No krill or seabed glop for fertiliser?

Depends on weather, to some extent.  One of my setting's major worlds
is largely water, and hot.  There's a moderate amount of agriculture
on the surface land, but it's all in domes.  The weekly cat 5
hurricanes make growing things outside unlikely.  Water worlds are
likely to have bad weather, which makes surface platforms hard to do.

>
>> * Finally, total life support provides food as
>>   well as air. It is available from TL7 up, at
>>   200 cf and 2,000 lbs. per person or less. The
>>   rules don't really say if that is algae glop
>>   or truly edible food, but I guess the quality
>>   depends on the TL.
>
> Back in the day Gibson suggested algae fed on by shrimp fed on by catfish as
> a food system in an arcology.
>
> And there is always slab meat :) or fish.  If you have advanced medicine you
> probably can clone tissue.  If you can grow cloned flesh, why not meat?

THS makes this TL 9, as I recall.  There are also some algae strains
that are pretty close to nutitonally complete.

-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com