Space Farms

What sort of design will a space farm have? In orbit, or on another planet or moon?

Are there any companies out there working on the first space farm?

My guess is that small gardens will be in orbit and large farms will be on or rather under the Moons surface. Most if not all will not use direct sunlight but rather use artificial light with electricity ironically generated by sunlight.

Photo-bio-reactors

0-g 3d-aeroponics?

Why not use light pipes to deliver sunlight (filtered, obviously) to the underground farms?

NASA has done some work on plants in space, apparently. Looks like aeroponics is the way to go...

Thanks for that, I tried a quick search the night I added this thread and couldn't find much information on the current state of this field.

Maybe I should go to the library and search some journals.

What I did find was ideas of normal module sized greenhouses, some burried when on the surface of a planet or moon, others just extra attachments to a space station. Also these systems use humans or some propose using robots moving inside the greenhouse tending for the plants.

The "idea" I have been thinking about lately is a small pod based system that does use direct sunlight. /of course with some filtering and radiation shielding/

The basic concept is small growing pods that has maybe 1 square meter growing surface within, maybe folded in some way, or just perfectly flat.
The pod can be mass produced, the plants are put inside, and either are tended to at some regular intervals by opening the pods in a processing facility, or by small robots that fit inside the pods, Or a combination thereof.

The idea is to have large chains or fields of these things arranged around the habitat. The harvesting happens in a central location, or a harvester moves around extracts the plants, reseeds and restocks the pods and leaves them where they are.

The pods could be connected through tubes and kept in place by tethers delivering the nutrient solutions and co2 or they could be completely sealed off little units with all the required nutrients and water needed for the growth phase.

I think the advantage of this if it can be pulled off is that it could be mass produced faster than larger structures that one needs to fit humans or large robots inside to tend for the crops. Also there is a built in redundancy of having large number of separated growing environments.

Other advantage could be that parts or all of it could be 3d printed on smaller machines to be replaced or fixed, and it also could be developed by small hobby groups or companies with not much capital at their disposal.

I think if we do want to have millions of people living off world solving farming is a crucial step towards this goal. We have a lot of hype about cheap ways to orbit, or resources we could bring back and sell, but not much about how to feed the millions living up there.

Any thoughts? Is small modular greenhouse pods a bad idea?

Algae can produce many novel compounds.

algae can be a complete protein...

I have been thinking about bioreactors. It would be probably the most efficient system in terms of biomass production, and with 3d printing we might be able to print cool food products with the cells or extracts. But this system would probably need genetic engineering which isn't in the reach for small and cheap projects I had in mind. It's something bigger companies with more capital can toy with.

I had another system in mind for terrestrial use where the harvested plant biomass goes into a bioreactor instead of animals to produce meat or dairy like products. This system also could be potentially more efficient than using animals, but would require a lot of bioengineering. It's not something that could be done overnight with some pocket money.

Mmmm, bacteria milk...

You probably could modify cyanobacteria to secrete the particular mix of proteins and fats that are found in milk. Or even better, get potatoes to do it, since potatoes and milk form an almost-complete diet - if you enhance your milk potatoes in Molybdenum, you'll have everything you need in one, spud shaped food.

Bacteria milk? Hast thou ever eaten yogurt?

Well yes, but those bacteria don't produce milk, but modify what's there.

Yes, well, that was tongue in cheek. But there are other types of milk also - coconut milk, soy milk, teriyaki milk, . . .

I have tried other "milks" ....this space food might take some getting used to. I guess hunger might be the best spice.

The typical Western diet is probably not very practical. But then neither will Eastern, or African.

Like any other environment, it will demand change and adaption from food too. Not good or bad, just different.

True enough. If you already are going to Mars, getting used to weird food is going to be the least of the things that you will have to get used to.

But this is one of the reasons bacteria should be planted on Mars (actually, the main reason). Once you have something living populating the planet, no matter how small, it becomes possible to develop something to eat - by going up the food chain (obviously, as you go up the food chain, you would have to move that food chain inside, but as long as the bottom of the food chain is reproducing itself, the whole chain is supported).