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Background

In a near future sci-fi setting, humanity has spread across the solar system and many humans live in space habitats. For reasons of economics and self-sufficiency, those habitats have their own hydroponic farms, to provide food and oxygen to the inhabitants. However, pressurized space farms are expensive and prone to catastrophic failure due to impacts or collisions.

Unpressurized farms growing genetically engineered vacuum-adapted plants might provide a cheaper and more robust alternative. The plants would grow in some substrate supplying nutrients, water, and CO2 via their roots, while the leaves would be exposed to vacuum and sunlight for photosynthesis.

Several other questions have asked about the general feasibility of vacuum-adapted plants, but focused more on plants able to survive in "natural" space environments. They list several challenges faced by plants growing under vacuum conditions, some of which may be solved by the space farm design itself.

The question

Could such a design be feasible and would it provide any benefits compared to fully pressurized space farms? Aside from cost and robustness, maybe the plants could even provide some form of biological radiation shielding.

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  • $\begingroup$ one question per post, thanks. $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch
    Commented Aug 26 at 11:18
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    $\begingroup$ Plants get their carbon from the air in order to grow, and they breathe oxygen from the air just like animals. A plant cannot live in a vacuum any more than a human can. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Aug 26 at 11:26
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    $\begingroup$ Plants need H2O, CO2 and O, in space these have to be contained to avoid dissipation to non useful concentrations, this necessarily means it must be at some level of pressure, ergo your question is, nonsensical? .. maybe you mean are space plants with an airtight structure that can contain all they need within themselves (including perhaps animal partners, the ultimate lichen perhaps) possible? though then the problem with such a 'plant' floating in space is it can't really 'grow' past it's current size as their are no external resources (water, nutrients etc) to draw on.. $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Commented Aug 26 at 12:15
  • $\begingroup$ Such plants ^ would have to be on something (an asteroid or moon) or be mobile and able to engulf small bodies in space (asteroids etc) in order to grow at all .. they couldn't just be 'floating in space' that's not going to work. $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Commented Aug 26 at 12:24
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    $\begingroup$ You still have a pressurized component housing the substrate, but now the plant has to somehow grow through the walls of the pressure vessel, and you need to engineer a plant that can grow while exposed to vacuum with minimal loss of volatiles, while transporting CO2 from its roots to the leaves where photosynthesis occurs, and the O2 from the leaves back to the roots, all without being able to use water evaporation for cooling, and any damage to the plant is still likely to be catastrophic. How is this supposed to be cheaper than putting a normal plant in a pressurized plastic bag? $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 26 at 13:16

1 Answer 1

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Very far-fetched.

The main challenge of placing living beings in space is pressure containment. Zero pressure outside means that everything will evaporate, sublimate, or find some way, any way, to escape. Even conventional plastics can't survive in space due to outgassing.

The process of photosynthesis requires oxygen and water (separately or dissolved). These will have to be contained entirely inside the plant.

But not impossible.

First, let's get the first thing out: there is almost no way for such lifeforms to evolve naturally. You need air and water, which require pressure, to begin evolution.

This calls for genetic engineering beyond our current dreams. We're talking the ability to completely design a being's behavior, from scratch. You're no longer constrained by such categories as "plant" or "animal"; you're the master of life.

Let's make it clear what this level of biotech entails. By this time, your species has long overcome death from age and disease. Your children's characteristics are freely defined by their creators. Maybe "parents", but all except the most hardcore of primitivists aren't wasting their bodies on childbirth. In fact, the only reason you're not engineering photosynthesis right into your species is that it just isn't efficient for a highly mobile being.

The actual design

The plant-creature will have to build an impermeable protective shell, acting as a pressure vessel, containing the air and water inside.

We already know of such shells. Chitin carapaces and nails are reasonably impermeable. These shells grow slower than normal cells, but they do grow.

This space plant will most likely grow in thick tubes, which circulate the fluids and gases on the inside, and have a transparent outer shell. Thickness is needed for a phase-change capillary circulation route: gas goes one way, liquid through capillaries the other, similar to a heatpipe. These tubes will grow and spread, probably looking like a green glossy growths from the outside.

Of course, photosynthesis will only work if you're reasonably close to a star. Otherwise, you'll have to light them up with artificial lighting. In which case...

There's an easier option

Yes, the "frame challenge" so popular here.

Photosynthesis doesn't require land plants. It can be performed by phytoplankton even better. So - just make tubes and fill them with a hydroponic liquid, complete with the phytoplankton. Plastic can be transported as big bricks, melted down, extruded, welded. And these tubes can use forced circulation. They'll be resilient to damage, because you can have billions of loops, where losing just a few is a non-issue. All you need is lots of water.

Greenhouses are for haute cuisine delicacies. Tomatoes that look and taste Earth-grown. Sliced to the thinnest of the possibilities, and decorated with 0.1 mm sheets of radish. The luxuries of the space elites.

FOOD is the phytoplankton-based green goo. It's a monotonous diet, but artificial flavorings, dyes, and baking techniques can make anything look, feel and taste like something else. We rarely eat it today, because it's difficult to extract out of its water habitat, but we do eat it.

enter image description here

It's got a strong marine flavor, compared to lobster heads, and is considered a delicacy. Plankton been studied as a source of human food, found quite healthy, if a bit heavy on proteins. But much harder to filter out of a large volume of seawater than just catching the fish. That changes in space, where other foods are so much less accessible that plankton might just win on price.

...Will it taste like chicken?

Space-adapted plants won't be particularly tender, since they have to survive space. You're looking at a plastic-like outer shell, with layers of tough connective tissue underneath, needed for thermal insulation. All of that transparent, but with an airy photosynthesis tissue on the inside, and little room for any "fruit-like" formations. They'll likely be closer to the green goo, needing processing for human consumption.

But yes, it can taste like chicken, if you engineer chicken flavoring into its DNA. Just, without thorough processing, not one worthy of a civil war colonel.

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    $\begingroup$ Making the plant taste like chicken is the easy part. You can do that with the Super-Chicken Flavination sauce that we also probably have access to given that we’re scientifically-advanced enough to grow plants in a hard vacuum. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 26 at 21:57
  • $\begingroup$ we have the super-chicken flavination sauce today with artificial flavors, arguably. it's also not completely unreasonable to genetically engineer the plant to produce actual chicken meat. with current tech we can do this, but the meat is just sludge. Given the assumptions about genetic engineering we're already making, it wouldn't be that unrealistic for the plant to just have a whole live chicken in it. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 27 at 9:23
  • $\begingroup$ @Themoonisacheese The chicken part was a joke. Plankton is valued for its own flavor, which is most often compared to lobster heads and caviar. $\endgroup$
    – Therac
    Commented Aug 27 at 17:11

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