Grayson orbital industry.

John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

Hydroponics. Do not need "soil". All you need is the minerals in solution form. Can get those from asteroids. Still, quite a few tons of minerals.

Anyone else had the thought: If Grayson really wanted to, it could easily convert several of its "farms" into orbital bases for manufacturing etc. Not sure if the Skydomes dirtside is keeping up with the demand from the population explosion on Grayson.

Relax wrote:

John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

Hydroponics. Do not need "soil". All you need is the minerals in solution form. Can get those from asteroids. Still, quite a few tons of minerals.

But what do the cows eat that are in those orbital farms, IIRC they were "free-range" as it were in the "fields".

John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

Probably not as much as you'd expect. A lot of "soil" could be brought in from asteroid mining and organic amendments could be brought over from other orbital habitats. Only the first orbital farm would require organic amendments lifted from the planetary surface.

George J. Smith wrote:

Relax wrote:Hydroponics. Do not need "soil". All you need is the minerals in solution form. Can get those from asteroids. Still, quite a few tons of minerals.

But what do the cows eat that are in those orbital farms, IIRC they were "free-range" as it were in the "fields".

A ceramic base with micropores where the grass roots grow through the holes to reach the water borne minerals subsurface.

Effectively this is how all small plants are grown in a greenhouse. Just replace ceramic matrix able to hold up a cow, with sand used as the grow medium for small plants. Said seeds/small plants are then fed nutrients via spray. There are no nutrients in the sand freely available.

Relax wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:
But what do the cows eat that are in those orbital farms, IIRC they were "free-range" as it were in the "fields".

A ceramic base with micropores where the grass roots grow through the holes to reach the water borne minerals subsurface.

I call it "Chia-Field"!

First, not all of Grayson's food production is in orbit, just a high chunk of it that doesn't it well in small spaces

It's 2/3 of their total production. Hence the "feed 1,5 billion people" thing.

I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit

They are lifting down to the planet 3 million tons of food every day and uplifting comparable masses of water and air. Compared to that, lifting up the soil is irrelevant.

Belial666 wrote:

I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit

They are lifting down to the planet 3 million tons of food every day and uplifting comparable masses of water and air. Compared to that, lifting up the soil is irrelevant.

It is, but the lifting the initial soil (or ceramics), water and air were back when they had so much less capability and practice than they did now. How much work? The short answer is "a lot". Grayson was and is hard work.

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John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

Relax wrote:Hydroponics. Do not need "soil". All you need is the minerals in solution form. Can get those from asteroids. Still, quite a few tons of minerals.

George J. Smith wrote: But what do the cows eat that are in those orbital farms, IIRC they were "free-range" as it were in the "fields".

Not just asteroid minerals... They need superfreighter's worth of presumably decontaminated elemental exchange, especially carbohydrate and nutritive elements such as calcium. If you bring a million tons of food down, you need a million tons of "food ingredients up", though there might be other sources for a few of those elements.

Picture Grayson fifty years in the future. "Boy, when I was a kid we had it really really tough, all the farms were up there in orbit, no prolong, bad medical. Now y'all got big ole Steading level farms, local baseball stadiums, orchards, and yon Sphinxian brewery (see my investment thread) all under those domes across the way a bit."

John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

It might be easier to create the soil from an orbital source.

kzt wrote:

John Prigent wrote:I'd like to know how much work went into lifting (millions of?) tons of decontaminated soil into orbit for those farms. It can't have been a minor effort, even over generations.
Cheers
John

It might be easier to create the soil from an orbital source.

Except there's not too many really good orbital sources for the most important elements: carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Of those, the oxygen part is probably the easiest, because it's the leftover from photosynthesis, which turns the carbon back into "life form" feed. But in a "counter grav" civilization, which I'd assume was not totally lost to Grayson, you'd bring up equal amounts of "stuff to feed stuff" as you brought back in foodstuffs, aka let's say your "sewage treatment facilities" are sucking off all the methane, bottling it and that's part of the cargo delivery to the orbiting farm, etc. Nitrogenous part, not sure because I'm not an organic chemist or farmer though. Biggest question I'd have would be about things like pollination, etc. for seed crops; I'd imagine that bees wouldn't really enjoy zero-gee, etc. all that much, and the planetary atmosphere seems pretty poisonous for pollinators.