How Do You have a food supply lasting for 20 years in space?

Put a farm on the space station?!!??

Big Store room?!!??

Concentrated then freeze dried food has a very long shelf life plus takes up less volume. So make the food a terrible tasting powder that when water is added becomes a paste. A 10 year supply would last 20 years if it tastes bad enough.

Compress whatever can be compressed into tablets.

Dehydrated foods & vegetables.

Production unit if close enough to a star (aquaculture, vegetables etc)

Cans and frozen.

Bee honey should last that long.

Five star convenient store - available around any corner.

Enos.

Hydroponics - large initial seed supply takes up little space or mass, seeds will replenish themselves. May need protein supplements.

Unless you get the original seeds from Montsano, in that case no more seeds for you.

Twinkies last for ever and don't take up that much space.

Dont worry about food the air will run out

way before the food will

harvest maggots they will eat all the waste

and you can eat the maggots

Where are you going? Can I come with you?

Yeah eat your fellow astronauts, umm tastes like chicken. Now where did i put the large pot and seasoning. Or you could skew them and have human kebab using the engine as a flame. Umm scrachings

Find Aliens and eat them

they way you have phrased your question, it sounds as if you have everything set to go, but you're just worried you're going to run out of munchies on the trip.

If you've watched the conversations here, and attempted to keep up with other science related web-sites, you'll have noticed that the technology is not that far away from being able to "grow" meat in vats... no live animals required. So, you won't really need an arc, but you will need sufficient hydroponics to give you a source of protein, vitamins and all the other good stuff you'll need for a balanced diet for the next couple of decades... and a really, really good knowledge of recycling... water, waste and other good stuff that you can't take out to the trash for pickup.

Personally, I'd be more concerned with taking enough books to read.

ANY GOOD WEB SITE FOR HYDROPONICS?

Ms Paricia Toyota

It's simple. Stock up more multi-vitamins from the SuperMarket and don't forget to ask them to wrapp it up better for the unusal jurney. Don't use preservatives though as they can give you a head ache like we do here on this blog by giving you such usefull hints. Any room for a stowaways?

Years ago the japanese developed waste recycling of human feces. It was initially called soylent brown.

You seem pretty impatient to solve this problem... got a paper due? :)

As others have said, recycling will be extremely important, as will growing food. One interesting recent discovery is a fungus that grows in radiation, actually takes energy from ionizing radiation. Who wants glowing green mushrooms on their lab-grown pseudo meat sandwich?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070529_fungus_radiation.html

how can you have a food supply for 20 years in space without RE STOCKING

I will reply with another question: will the crew commit never getting sick during this 20 years journey? If they do: some (or all) might pass away leaving a lot of food on board forever in space! Will you also take dehydrated syringes and scalpels along?

What will you do with the corpses: will they get embalmed, deep frozen or just dropped to outer space?

Another thought to consider, will the crew be all one sex or will it be co-ed? Twenty years would be more than enough time to have a few rug rats.

"I really need help so if you have ANY idea AT ALL please please comment :D"

What's the rush? Is launch time next week?

See the thread "March of the Machines," The Return of Rama A Sci-Fi work of Arthur C. Clarke, 1972

IMHO With an inquiry like the above you really need 'help.'

If you are indeed serious sign in as a real person!

I don't think food would go bad at temp close to 0K. Store them outside of the craft/building away from the sun. You'll need to shield them from radiation also.

Pineapple

Hi,

where is a problem?

People in Siberia have often tried 10.000 year old meat from mammouth corpses frozen for that time.

Dry stuff will be eatable much longer.

Better try robotic spacecraft.

Better stay inside our solar system.

RHABE

You may want to check out this link for some answers, good hunting ! This corp may help you in other ways, and you may already know of them, csoul..... http://www.paragonsdc.com/

Somehow, I don't see the original post I made here, So I want to reiterate. I believe a combination of efforts solve problems in the long run. There may not be one solution to any given problem. So, dried food storage, perhaps food storage that uses cold space to freeze it, say in outer containers on your ship, which is hopefully not as small as a space shuttle ! Also, what are the limitations of a 20 year journey, how big is the ship, so that you may consider plant / vegetables, soy, and such ? I also added that I wonder about the limitations of humans on the trip, (ex the absence of gravity making it hard on the astronauts to keep build muscle, etc.). Any ideas on that aspect, or places you could point me to ? I also added, where are we going ? A planet tour ? mars ? Could you also find water sources on planets you stopped at ?

Best suggestion on the 20 year food is a 20 year power supply and seed. The waste from the crew can be recycled as fertilizer. This will reduce the mass that must be transported. The problem of gravity use gyro stabilized space-ship spin this also helps with farming the food crops. The farming helps with boredom of open space.

20 years in space? Leaving within the next ten years? Have you solved the brittle bone problem already? Maybe re-(bi)cycling will help both problems.