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General The plants that would (probably) be taken to the stars

I’m still intrigued by the OP question: What types of plants would a Traveller carry into space?

Having read this thread, I realize this is a completely hypothetical question. So, I’m breaking it down into four questions.
By the way, I have a physics degree, so I’d really appreciate it if any discussion of biology was on an introductory college level. It’s been fun trying to keep up with the discussions of perchlorates but that’s about my limit.

1) On a TL8 ship (no terraforming, commercial fusion) traveling from Earth to Enceladus what plants would be moderately useful? (It could be any outer moon, I just like the way Enceladus looks)

2) On a TL10 ship (IISS went to the forgotten corners of the scrapyard for this one) making one or two J-1 jumps, what plants would survive the trip with low power grow lights and days without gravity, but still scrub some CO2 and provide a few fresh fruits? (We’re barely making enough to pay the maintenance costs and the captain hasn’t been paid in two months, so we’re cutting corners everywhere we can.)

3) On a TL12 Far Trader making four jumps with minimal time in port (Our trade run doesn’t pay for sightseeing) what plants would make the trip a bit less dreary? Would any plants provide benefits that outweigh the extra upkeep?

4) On a TL14 Luxury Yacht ferrying wealthy clients to purple beaches and hell planets (enjoying the views of 12 km high lava fountains from the balcony with a cool beverage) what planets would enhance the experience for our spoiled, I mean discerning, clients?

Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone lending their expertise to this thread. It makes planning and playing Traveller even more fun.
 
It is going to cost something just to get there and see what the situation is.
Perhaps I wasn't clear.
when I said it would "cost something", I meant something other than a financial cost.
When you have 10 tons of space and two different 8 ton cargoes, you have to make a decision.
Do you get all of one cargo, that will "cost you" 6 tons of the other cargo.

This is where the logistics I keep mentioning come in.
People who will never board a spacecraft will spend their work days, and over and more working with spreadsheets, charts and more to figure out where every cubic millimeter of "Anything" will be fit in.
This includes items required for the ship, for the crew, fore passengers, for anyone and everyone - and for every task.

Example: "My players" bought 4 ballistic gel dummies made to resemble a former crew member. Those will be used for target practice when their ship's bay is not full.
I reminded them that if they tied the dummies together, the only place to put them on the ship was in the cargo bay. And, I also reminded them that even where the dummies did not equal a dTon of cargo, they did take up the floor space equal to 1 dTon in the cargo bay.

So, the "COST" of the decision to store the dummies there was that they lost 1 dTon of cargo space for speculative cargo, or for the lone High passenger they could have hired.

So, this was not about paying money
I am sorry I was not more clear on which version of the word's meaning I intended
 
I’m still intrigued by the OP question: What types of plants would a Traveller carry into space?

Having read this thread, I realize this is a completely hypothetical question. So, I’m breaking it down into four questions.
By the way, I have a physics degree, so I’d really appreciate it if any discussion of biology was on an introductory college level. It’s been fun trying to keep up with the discussions of perchlorates but that’s about my limit.

1) On a TL8 ship (no terraforming, commercial fusion) traveling from Earth to Enceladus what plants would be moderately useful? (It could be any outer moon, I just like the way Enceladus looks)

2) On a TL10 ship (IISS went to the forgotten corners of the scrapyard for this one) making one or two J-1 jumps, what plants would survive the trip with low power grow lights and days without gravity, but still scrub some CO2 and provide a few fresh fruits? (We’re barely making enough to pay the maintenance costs and the captain hasn’t been paid in two months, so we’re cutting corners everywhere we can.)

3) On a TL12 Far Trader making four jumps with minimal time in port (Our trade run doesn’t pay for sightseeing) what plants would make the trip a bit less dreary? Would any plants provide benefits that outweigh the extra upkeep?

4) On a TL14 Luxury Yacht ferrying wealthy clients to purple beaches and hell planets (enjoying the views of 12 km high lava fountains from the balcony with a cool beverage) what planets would enhance the experience for our spoiled, I mean discerning, clients?

Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone lending their expertise to this thread. It makes planning and playing Traveller even more fun.

Hmmm, I honestly concentrated more on the "to Mars" and "terraforming" intent.
I'm "thinking" anything the crew brought aboard outside the pure cargo and sales motive would be "small footprint" stuff, or something that would make a Hiver more comfortable and remind it of home...heheheh.
But, given the number of ships I've created using the various Traveller design systems, space is very very scarce.
So, the cost of adding plants into the deckplan is either "less furniture", "less electronic systems", "less storage space"....the list goes on.
Some plants I would list right off could be compact indoor houseplants: Peperomia, Zebra Haworthia, and ZZ plants, or small shrubs like the dwarf boxwood, compact spirea, and slow-growing dwarf conifers.
You can also go with baring bulkheads of art, posters, etc and running 3 inch rails to which you can secure small pots in which to put potted plants like an herbal garden. You wouldn't have enough space on an "Adventure class" ship to crow substantial amounts of crops, but you would have enough to regularly season what comes out of the cans you have, or flavor the protein gel paste your autoServ textures and prints out for you.

The cargo class plants you haul will be determined by the scientists managing the decisions what to send where, for colonial efforts, or what the folks on the distant end ordered via x-mail out of their Sears & Robuck Christmas Wishbook....heheh
 
So, this was not about paying money
But it is about paying money. Money for man power. Money for materials.

An estimate for a SpaceX Starhip is $100M per launch. They want to get that down to $10M.

Now, obviously this is all conjecture. But Elon Musk is working on a $1 TRILLION pay package from Tesla. Basically if he gets Tesla up to a $10T company, he gets 10% of it.

If (big if) he pulls it off, and (just making numbers up) earns 5% on his money a year, that's $50 BILLION a year.

Even if a rocket to Mars cost $1B each, he could launch one a week and "break even" for his personal wealth.

Nobody disagrees that its going to take a lot of lift, and a lot of money to do Something on Mars. But, the potential is there for someone motivated to actually have the resources to do that.
 
I’m still intrigued by the OP question: What types of plants would a Traveller carry into space?

Having read this thread, I realize this is a completely hypothetical question. So, I’m breaking it down into four questions.
By the way, I have a physics degree, so I’d really appreciate it if any discussion of biology was on an introductory college level. It’s been fun trying to keep up with the discussions of perchlorates but that’s about my limit.

1) On a TL8 ship (no terraforming, commercial fusion) traveling from Earth to Enceladus what plants would be moderately useful? (It could be any outer moon, I just like the way Enceladus looks)

2) On a TL10 ship (IISS went to the forgotten corners of the scrapyard for this one) making one or two J-1 jumps, what plants would survive the trip with low power grow lights and days without gravity, but still scrub some CO2 and provide a few fresh fruits? (We’re barely making enough to pay the maintenance costs and the captain hasn’t been paid in two months, so we’re cutting corners everywhere we can.)

3) On a TL12 Far Trader making four jumps with minimal time in port (Our trade run doesn’t pay for sightseeing) what plants would make the trip a bit less dreary? Would any plants provide benefits that outweigh the extra upkeep?

4) On a TL14 Luxury Yacht ferrying wealthy clients to purple beaches and hell planets (enjoying the views of 12 km high lava fountains from the balcony with a cool beverage) what planets would enhance the experience for our spoiled, I mean discerning, clients?

Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone lending their expertise to this thread. It makes planning and playing Traveller even more fun.
If you have room for a couple of racks of hydroponics, tomatoes do well when grown hydroponically. Other plants that grow as small climbing vines would also be good choices - many varies of bean, for example. If you've got space for a proper green house, you can add in ground crops like root vegetables, onions/shallots, peanuts, and pineapples, and some larges vines high up, like kiwifruit, grapes, and passionfruit.

However, these all take a fair while to produce, so you'd need to stagger their planting so they mature at different times, and its an on-going process. Things like raddishes might be good choices, simply because they grow and mature quickly.

For high-density production and/or CO2 scrubbing you're really looking at algae tanks.

I think Commander Truestar's suggestion of racks of live herbs is probably the most practical, as they can go in places like the kitchen and dining/living spaces without squeezing things, and they'll provide a bit of colour and aroma to those spaces as well.
 
Nobody disagrees that its going to take a lot of lift, and a lot of money to do Something on Mars. But, the potential is there for someone motivated to actually have the resources to do that.
There's also a matter of time. We just don't have the tech for most of this, and developing it will take a lot of time, no matter how much money is thrown at it. We do not know how to make a closed 'dome' ecology work, even with a goodly amount of inputs from outside, and finding out will take a long time, simply because the experiments will have to run for long periods.
 
Other plants that grow as small climbing vines would also be good choices
If there's no gravity (during the voyage) ... which way do the climbing vines "climb" ...? :rolleyes:
Once you leave terrestrial biosphere (and everything that implies), all kinds of assumptions stop working.

Things like ... hydroponic tanks.
Water in open topped water containers work "just fine" while there is (some) gravity present to keep the liquid "held down" inside the tank for food crops to grow on top of. But as soon as you go zero-G on an inertial transfer orbit trajectory between planets ... coasting the entire way to save fuel ... water doesn't necessarily "want to say" cooped up inside of an open topped container anymore.

Water does ... weird science ... in zero gravity, due to the high surface tension.

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Those kinds of ... changes ... in behavior of liquid materials in space will necessarily limit "what works" when making orbital transfers between planets.

Additionally, water in zero-G ... if not respected properly ... can be quite hazardous, simply because there's no gravity to help make it pool and drain in useful directions. If a glob of water "goes down the wrong pipe" and gets into your lungs ... it's going to coat most of the (working) surface area of your lungs, making it likely that you could drown (in space) relatively easily because there's no gravity making the water want to pool at the "bottom" of your lungs. Droplets of water can "drip" off a mass and go in random directions, after which they make contact with surfaces and start surface tension coating those surfaces. Better hope the surface doesn't lead to anything electronic/important that prefers to stay dry in order to work properly.
 
Other plants that grow as small climbing vines would also be good choices
On this you have to be careful.
After transitioning from IT to Public Adjusting, I have been fighting insurance companies on behalf of home and building owners.
Part of that has been taking classes towards certifications, including home and building inspection.

Where climbing plants are considered, they do things like drive roots into gaps or cracks. As they continue growing, they will force gaps to widen, create cracks and eventually undermine the strength and/or impermeability of a surface, destroying necessary hermetic seals.

So, using plants of this nature would only be begging to be forced to replace the surfaces (and often, the structures) on which you let them grow
 
If you have room for a couple of racks of hydroponics, tomatoes do well when grown hydroponically. Other plants that grow as small climbing vines would also be good choices - many varies of bean, for example. If you've got space for a proper green house, you can add in ground crops like root vegetables, onions/shallots, peanuts, and pineapples, and some larges vines high up, like kiwifruit, grapes, and passionfruit.

However, these all take a fair while to produce, so you'd need to stagger their planting so they mature at different times, and its an on-going process. Things like raddishes might be good choices, simply because they grow and mature quickly.

For high-density production and/or CO2 scrubbing you're really looking at algae tanks.

I think Commander Truestar's suggestion of racks of live herbs is probably the most practical, as they can go in places like the kitchen and dining/living spaces without squeezing things, and they'll provide a bit of colour and aroma to those spaces as well.
1. We need to know which plants do well in space.
2. We need to know which of these plants grow well together.
3. Will any of these plants last long enough to get the human crew/passengers to their destination?

'Ponics requires one or more crew (depending on size of ship) with knowledge of how the 'ponics section interacts with the rest of the ship. Just like with engineering, a small problem in the 'ponics section can become a disaster for the whole ship really fast, or take time until discovered a little too late. Could have robots taking care of the 'ponics to cut down on some crew... but this might be further in the future.
 
On this you have to be careful.
After transitioning from IT to Public Adjusting, I have been fighting insurance companies on behalf of home and building owners.
Part of that has been taking classes towards certifications, including home and building inspection.

Where climbing plants are considered, they do things like drive roots into gaps or cracks. As they continue growing, they will force gaps to widen, create cracks and eventually undermine the strength and/or impermeability of a surface, destroying necessary hermetic seals.

So, using plants of this nature would only be begging to be forced to replace the surfaces (and often, the structures) on which you let them grow
You wouldn't let them grow where they willed. They'd have to be confined to lines or frames. Of course this means someone who knows how to manage plants in that environment will be needed, so that's yet another skill someone has to have. They'll also be managing the nutrient mix in the hydroponics, making sure the water flow system is working right, and all that. If they are not also the person managing life-support in general they will need to work with that person to make sure the plants aren't doing anything to the air that they shouldn't (probably not if there are only a few and they're not an integral part of the life support system, but you never know).

Of course, if some plant manages to get loose and grow in some un-noticed part of the air ducting or something it could get exciting. Of course there are already plenty of moulds that do this, so cleaning out all the stuff that's growing where you don't want it is and will be part of spaceship/station maintenance.
 
'Ponics requires one or more crew (depending on size of ship) with knowledge of how the 'ponics section interacts with the rest of the ship. Just like with engineering, a small problem in the 'ponics section can become a disaster for the whole ship really fast, or take time until discovered a little too late. Could have robots taking care of the 'ponics to cut down on some crew... but this might be further in the future.
Of course, if some plant manages to get loose and grow in some un-noticed part of the air ducting or something it could get exciting. Of course there are already plenty of moulds that do this, so cleaning out all the stuff that's growing where you don't want it is and will be part of spaceship/station maintenance.
Elizabeth Moon, in her Heris Serrano Legacy series, has a couple of 'ponics problems crop up and a few conversations on the subject of 'ponics going wrong that really make one think about how many things can go wrong on a ship, and this is just in the 'ponics section. Don't worry, there's a bunch of stuff that goes wrong in other ship sections in the series, it's just you don't see 'ponics that often in many Sci-Fi books or films.

You know, @Spinward Flow has a bunch of ship designs he's shared that have 'ponic sections (can't remember the terms he used...), but I don't remember if there were crew dedicated to those parts of the ship or if they were self contained/automated and you only checked them during monthly & annual maintenance or as part of the jump checklist.
 
You know, @Spinward Flow has a bunch of ship designs he's shared that have 'ponic sections (can't remember the terms he used...), but I don't remember if there were crew dedicated to those parts of the ship or if they were self contained/automated and you only checked them during monthly & annual maintenance or as part of the jump checklist.
@Spinward Flow had a whole thread on environmental life support.

Regenerative Life Support Biome rules for starships

It is a very well thought out piece of work. It's a thread where I miss being able to have printable view for posts.
The homebrew rules I cooked up (which @Silverhawk links to) require crew positions (steward + medic).

Steward crew positions assigned to the regenerative biome life support are "not available" for attending to high passengers. So if you want to have 8 high passengers (requires 1 Steward) AND a regenerative biome life support system, you'll need (at least) +1 Steward crew position who will be tending to the biome (and doing the cooking of the meals harvested from it). The "extra Steward(s)" are calculated based on LBB5.80 crew needed for the Service Department ... so 3 Steward crew positions per 1000 tons (no ship's troops) OR 2 Steward crew positions per 1000 tons (with ship's troops).

There is no change to the number of Medical personnel needed if there's a regenerative life support biome installed, but the skill level of the medical personnel needs to be higher than minimum (Medical-1) depending on the complexity/grade of the regenerative life support biome type (there's more than one option). Typically you're looking at needing Medical-2 to Medical-4 skill as a new/higher requirement, rather than the standard minimum of Medical-1. Of course, a side effect of doing this is that starship crews wind up with superior medical care and supervision while onboard (so, quality of life upgrade).

The regenerative biome life support system is (effectively) what amounts to Laboratory space in terms of construction cost (displacement and credits, so MCr0.2 per ton), which like all other parts of a spacecraft/starship require annual overhaul maintenance.

The benefit of using such a system is that it "negates" (or waives, if you prefer) the expenses associated with life support consumables overhead (Cr2000 per person per 2 weeks). Higher grades of biome types offer increasingly high levels of quality of life (something that Traveller RARELY, if ever, addresses in the context of starship design), which can be interpreted as increasingly luxurious. Once you reach Type-c you're looking at crews being able to access FRESH FOOD on the daily (and a dedicated Steward using that produce to cook meals for the crew, not just the passengers!).

Case in point ...




Now, MOST of Traveller doesn't deal with that kind of "foodie" level of detail/quality of life ... for military ships, for scout ships, for merchant ships ... for anyone ... mainly because the entire notion of a regenerative biome life support system isn't part of the CT rules set (and especially not for starship construction!).

But as soon as you REALLY think about it ... having that kind of Crew Quality Of Life type of OPTION available for starship construction would make a LOT of difference in the daily lives of people who live and work in space, spending most of their time far away from delicious agricultural products. The kind of LOYALTY and a sense of esprit de corps that can flow from something as simple as being able to eat fresh food ... every day ... in space ... would probably be among the top crew morale boosters and help retain the "best" people on payroll that could be built into starship classes, going all the way back to the commissioning of naval architect plans and lasting throughout the operational lifetime of the craft.

I would even go so far as to say that getting to live and work on a craft with a "decent" regenerative biome life support system could easily become something of a "moat" against losing crews to headhunters and poaching by competitors. It would be a "perk" of the starship classes that make use of such systems in their design that would be hard to compete with when it comes to luring skilled crews away from opportunities on those classes ... meaning that "the better the life support system, the better the pool of applicants to choose from when it comes time to hire and retain your crew" as an owner/operator.

Sometimes, loyalty can be bought ... with a full stomach and freshly recycled (through biome) water and air. 😁
 
The benefit of using such a system is that it "negates" (or waives, if you prefer) the expenses associated with life support consumables overhead (Cr2000 per person per 2 weeks). Higher grades of biome types offer increasingly high levels of quality of life (something that Traveller RARELY, if ever, addresses in the context of starship design), which can be interpreted as increasingly luxurious. Once you reach Type-c you're looking at crews being able to access FRESH FOOD on the daily (and a dedicated Steward using that produce to cook meals for the crew, not just the passengers!).
It's mainly addressed in how many people there are per stateroom, or to put it another way, how many DTons per person of living space/life support there is. If you use GURPS Traveller for your spaceships you can then use Vehicles to dig around in the details of the accommodations and play with different kinds of life support, etc. I doubt many people ever bothered.

The closest my players even came to worrying about this was to buy luxury grade rations every so often, and then stretch them so they could have a 'nice' meal once or twice a week, and to go hunting for fresh meat when on worlds where the local fauna was edible, though that was as much to save costs as anything else. Yes, they splashed out on luxury food, and then penny-pinched by hunting their own fresh meat.
 
The homebrew rules I cooked up (which @Silverhawk links to) require crew positions (steward + medic).

Steward crew positions assigned to the regenerative biome life support are "not available" for attending to high passengers. So if you want to have 8 high passengers (requires 1 Steward) AND a regenerative biome life support system, you'll need (at least) +1 Steward crew position who will be tending to the biome (and doing the cooking of the meals harvested from it). The "extra Steward(s)" are calculated based on LBB5.80 crew needed for the Service Department ... so 3 Steward crew positions per 1000 tons (no ship's troops) OR 2 Steward crew positions per 1000 tons (with ship's troops).

There is no change to the number of Medical personnel needed if there's a regenerative life support biome installed, but the skill level of the medical personnel needs to be higher than minimum (Medical-1) depending on the complexity/grade of the regenerative life support biome type (there's more than one option). Typically you're looking at needing Medical-2 to Medical-4 skill as a new/higher requirement, rather than the standard minimum of Medical-1. Of course, a side effect of doing this is that starship crews wind up with superior medical care and supervision while onboard (so, quality of life upgrade).

The regenerative biome life support system is (effectively) what amounts to Laboratory space in terms of construction cost (displacement and credits, so MCr0.2 per ton), which like all other parts of a spacecraft/starship require annual overhaul maintenance.

The benefit of using such a system is that it "negates" (or waives, if you prefer) the expenses associated with life support consumables overhead (Cr2000 per person per 2 weeks). Higher grades of biome types offer increasingly high levels of quality of life (something that Traveller RARELY, if ever, addresses in the context of starship design), which can be interpreted as increasingly luxurious. Once you reach Type-c you're looking at crews being able to access FRESH FOOD on the daily (and a dedicated Steward using that produce to cook meals for the crew, not just the passengers!).

Case in point ...




Now, MOST of Traveller doesn't deal with that kind of "foodie" level of detail/quality of life ... for military ships, for scout ships, for merchant ships ... for anyone ... mainly because the entire notion of a regenerative biome life support system isn't part of the CT rules set (and especially not for starship construction!).

But as soon as you REALLY think about it ... having that kind of Crew Quality Of Life type of OPTION available for starship construction would make a LOT of difference in the daily lives of people who live and work in space, spending most of their time far away from delicious agricultural products. The kind of LOYALTY and a sense of esprit de corps that can flow from something as simple as being able to eat fresh food ... every day ... in space ... would probably be among the top crew morale boosters and help retain the "best" people on payroll that could be built into starship classes, going all the way back to the commissioning of naval architect plans and lasting throughout the operational lifetime of the craft.

I would even go so far as to say that getting to live and work on a craft with a "decent" regenerative biome life support system could easily become something of a "moat" against losing crews to headhunters and poaching by competitors. It would be a "perk" of the starship classes that make use of such systems in their design that would be hard to compete with when it comes to luring skilled crews away from opportunities on those classes ... meaning that "the better the life support system, the better the pool of applicants to choose from when it comes time to hire and retain your crew" as an owner/operator.

Sometimes, loyalty can be bought ... with a full stomach and freshly recycled (through biome) water and air. 😁
All agreed and appreciated, except for medical as base skill for biome management. I would tend to use something like Agriculture for food production as a common colony/station skill, or in a pinch Engineering as a life support system.
 
All agreed and appreciated, except for medical as base skill for biome management. I would tend to use something like Agriculture for food production as a common colony/station skill, or in a pinch Engineering as a life support system.
The way I think of it is that the regenerative biome life support requires more than one department (set of crew skills) in order to manage and maintain it in use between annual overhaul maintenance cycles.

The Steward is responsible for the "life support" side of things (growing crops, harvesting edibles, managing air/water recycling, mulching/composting, etc.), so in terms of "lab work" the Steward is the "farmer" and the "chef" when it comes to questions of farm to table.

The increase in skill required for the Medical department is for the monitoring of crew (and passenger) health to prevent "recycling disease factors" from emerging. There are a number of disease vectors that can happen when "recycling" (including cannibalism!) occurs, where you get a variety of bias factors (such as harmful prions) emerging, which if not treated/accounted for can result in long term medical risks. So when you've got a regenerative biome life support system in operation, you need "better than minimum" medical care in order to operate the life support system SAFELY over the longer term.



In extremely LARGE installations, such as for a space station (think O'neill cylinder), I would expect there to be "platoons of specialists" in the various fields that a regenerative biome life support system would entail/require for the oversight and management of those systems (especially when modeling entire ecosystems!). But for "smaller" applications, such as ACS type starship designs, bringing things down to the level of you need Steward+Medic makes everything backwards compatible with LBB2/LBB5 in terms of crew roster requirements, even for craft of less than 1000 tons. :cool:(y)
 
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