Space Agriculture
Space Agriculture — Terra Invicta technology. The implementation of farming techniques in a micro and null gravity environment.
About Space Agriculture
Space Agriculture is a Terra Invicta technology in LifeScience with a research cost of 2,500.
The implementation of farming techniques in a micro and null gravity environment.
It is inconvenient, cumbersome, and risky to send copious amounts of food on every manned flight, while for our stations to remain dependent on supply drops from Earth is short-term thinking in the extreme. It is paramount that space-based personnel can grow their own food, even in environments with little-to-no gravity and a hostile atmosphere. Closed Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) are our best hope here; in other words, a sealed loop, which creates both food and oxygen, while requiring only light, power, and human personnel. The carbon dioxide exhaled by the latter is transformed into oxygen by plants, while their urine and waste-water is recycled into drinking water, and their excrement and food waste is used to grow the nutrient-rich plants. Such systems have been pursued without success for decades, but the creation of a new strain of fast-growing, protein-rich algae has finally yielded the breakthrough we need. In time, we will be able to vary our astronauts' diets by introducing leafy plants and even fish farms, which will make long-term off-planet habitation that much more comfortable.