Re: I found the food numbers!

[T.L.G.vanderLinden@student.utwente.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

> Now we found that rations for field troops or explorers weighed about 2.2
>kilos per day (.8 tons per year) and dehydrated could be a lot less.  But
>over all; 36 tons per person is about 21 years of food mass at their 1.67
>tons per year, or 45  food years at our .8 tons per year.  I'm not even
>going to bother with freeze dried numbers.  We won't want to be out that
>long!  Even if you assume no soil.  The mass is still 14 tons per person.
>Which comes to 8.38 year of 1.67 tons per year food years, or 17.5 years at
>our .8 tons per year.  Then I realized that the farm design required
>doubling the internal volume of the hab centrifuge. Which would add another
>20 to 230 tons per person!  (the latter if you shielded the farm
>centrifuge.)

Would stored food need no protection against radiation? I'm not sure how
much  and if the food would become radioactive. But if it does, it may need
shielding too.

>Oh, while on the topic of Mass.  The drive system people seem to be going
>through hoops to build a huge, high efficiency (relativistic exhaust)
>engine to keep the necessary reaction mass amounts down to grams per day.
>I would suggest that if we aren't going to recycle our -- ah-- food by
>products.  The crew will be providing a few tons of usable mass per day.
>Dehydrate, incinerate to plasma or ionize, and pump it into the
>accelerator.  With an electro-magnetic accelerator (as apposed to a thermal
>rocket) the type of mass used is unimportant, and for ship design purposes
>using the same stored mass to feed the crew and drive system is very
>elegant and efficient.

Using all these different kinds of atoms would not be very efficient and
probably impossible. Accelerators work best if only one kind of particle
(depending on mass & charge) is used.


Timothy