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Complaining about Kitchens and Coat Racks

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Re: Complaining about Kitchens and Coat Racks
Post by Relax   » Sat Dec 10, 2022 11:49 pm

Relax
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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Relax wrote:Uh, Honor in early books complains about Hydroponics reports. Hydroponics section on the ship is growing FRESH food...

So, No, they have not figured out how to keep food tasting fresh with perfect nutrition in the Honorverses time. If that was the case, there would not be a hydroponics section onboard a spaceship.


Actually, no, this doesn't imply that they cook the fresh food. Hydroponics is growing foodstuff, sure, but how that is processed into meals is an unknown factor. They still need biomass to make food somehow and the HV doesn't seem to have perfected the technique of creating food from C, H, O, N, P and other substrate atoms. Complex organic chains are still required.

However, I'm neither saying that they simply process the biomass into a fine paste and make meals from that. There's a psychological effect here and keeping the crew fed with fresh food may help with crew morale. There's a lot of grey area in-between.

Aboard ships, crew members don't cook for themselves and there are no individual kitchens. That's what stewards are for. Maybe some of the highest-ranked officers aboard (CO and flag) have dedicated areas for themselves, all others share pantries and food preparation areas ("kitchens"), according to rank.

Pretty sure same passage talks about Hydroponics techs. Today we are getting more and more machines which automatically pick fruit for instance. I see zero reason this would stop as it is pretty much algorithms for a computer to determine was is a ripe fruit/vegetable and what is not.

Yes, food has to be processed. Today most food is processed in machines when in large restaurants or big facilities for distribution. The only exception are fresh salads and even that uses machines in processing facilities, so I see zero reason why this would be any different in the future. This aspect of the HV also has to do with the great resizing. It was around this time the books completely dropped any mention of hydroponics as all the ships drastically reduced in Volume.
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Re: Complaining about Kitchens and Coat Racks
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Dec 11, 2022 1:44 am

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Relax wrote:Pretty sure same passage talks about Hydroponics techs. Today we are getting more and more machines which automatically pick fruit for instance. I see zero reason this would stop as it is pretty much algorithms for a computer to determine was is a ripe fruit/vegetable and what is not.

Yes, food has to be processed. Today most food is processed in machines when in large restaurants or big facilities for distribution. The only exception are fresh salads and even that uses machines in processing facilities, so I see zero reason why this would be any different in the future. This aspect of the HV also has to do with the great resizing. It was around this time the books completely dropped any mention of hydroponics as all the ships drastically reduced in Volume.

Wasn't the great resizing early 2005?
There are 4 books I've got searchable text for that mention "hydroponic":
* Honor Among Enemies (1996)
* Fire Season (2012) - admittedly about liners; not warships; and set hundreds of years in the past.
* House of Steel (2013)
* A Call to Duty (2014) - set hundreds of years in the past; but does imply warship hydroponics were to provide fresh fruit and vegetables to the crew.

So, while many of the mentions were in HAE, 3/4 of the books that mention this actually significantly postdate the great resizing. (HaE 5 hits, HoS 1 hit, ACtD 5 hits, FS 1 hit)

FWIW HAE mentions "hydroponics specialists"; specifically as being among the surrender peep crew from PNS Vaubon. And then ACtD mentions the "hydroponics division" and "someone from hydroponics".

But as to what the personnel / specialists assigned to hydroponics actually did either back in Travis Long's time or currently, the books are silent on. So the level of automation used in picking the fresh fruits and vegetables the crew will consume is unspecified; as is how they are routinely prepared and how automated that might be.


Still, since ACtD specifically said that issues with the orbiting warship's hydroponics could be mitigated because they could get fresh fruit and vegetable for the crew shipped up from Manticore that implies that at least some of them are being served fresh (whether uncooked in a salad or fruit bowl, or cooked for immediate consumption is again unspecified).
But it seem to me that if they just needed arbitrary edible biomass (as another poster speculated earlier), or were preparing all the hydroponics harvest for preservation then there would be no need to ship specifically fresh fruit and vegetables up. (They could ship up the more long term storable prepared products - or arbitrary biomass - instead)
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Re: Complaining about Kitchens and Coat Racks
Post by Relax   » Sun Dec 11, 2022 2:46 am

Relax
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Jonathan_S wrote:
Relax wrote:Pretty sure same passage talks about Hydroponics techs.

Wasn't the great resizing early 2005?
There are 4 books I've got searchable text for that mention "hydroponic":
* Honor Among Enemies (1996)
So, while many of the mentions were in HAE, 3/4 of the books that mention this actually significantly postdate the great resizing. (HaE 5 hits, HoS 1 hit, ACtD 5 hits, FS 1 hit)

But as to what the personnel / specialists assigned to hydroponics actually did..... SNIP

FWIW HAE mentions "hydroponics specialists"; specifically as being among the surrender peep crew from PNS Vaubon. And then ACtD mentions the "hydroponics division" and "someone from hydroponics".

Good pts.

I don't know about you, but reading about Hard Hitting futuristic fiction books about hydroponics... its why we read DW. Very scintillating. A great way to stay awake at night. Chefs to the Forefront!
:lol:
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Re: Complaining about Kitchens and Coat Racks
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Dec 11, 2022 6:42 pm

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Relax wrote:I don't know about you, but reading about Hard Hitting futuristic fiction books about hydroponics... its why we read DW. Very scintillating. A great way to stay awake at night. Chefs to the Forefront!
:lol:


I'd love to see a short story about the stewards aboard a ship, and their gossiping about James "The Legend" MacGuiness.
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