Does Titan drink coffee or tea?
May 1, 2010 2:47 PM Subscribe
AskingForANovelFilter: Which would be easier and more economic to grow in a domed colony on Titan or to import from Earth: coffee or tea?
I'm assuming mostly hydroponic based farming... but I guess it would also have to take into account processing of the beans/leaves.
Transport from Earth would have to take into account weight and volume, so I suspect tea would be more economical, but I might be missing other factors.
I'm assuming mostly hydroponic based farming... but I guess it would also have to take into account processing of the beans/leaves.
Transport from Earth would have to take into account weight and volume, so I suspect tea would be more economical, but I might be missing other factors.
I think you could make the answer be one or the other simply by changing the rules of your future. Is space travel cheap and easy? Then importing tea is easy. Is biological engineering far advanced from where it is today? if so, then genetically engineered low gravity, low light tea plants thrive in the Titan environment. Perhaps the answer lies in how we overcome the numerous obstacles to setting up a domed colony on titan in the first place. With tea or coffee being luxuries, presumably life on the colony is relatively easy if they are available at all.
The amount of assumptions you'll have to make to get people living comfortably on Titan leaves you enough wiggle room to decide what you like better, tea or coffee, and the assumptions you made can further be altered to support importation or home grown.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:16 PM on May 1, 2010
The amount of assumptions you'll have to make to get people living comfortably on Titan leaves you enough wiggle room to decide what you like better, tea or coffee, and the assumptions you made can further be altered to support importation or home grown.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:16 PM on May 1, 2010
It's very hard to imagine it being economical to lift food out of Earth's gravity well and boost it up to Titan. All you need on Titan is genetic material (a seed) and power. You presumably have power in spades or you're not getting to Titan in the first place. So you would set up a grow up.
Generally you would want to boost as little mass as possible out to Titan. Basically information, and things that can replicate themselves, whether organic organisms or synthetic ones. Likely your colony is built by nanobots responding to software beamed from Earth, and your food (assuming you want to put actual humans up there, as opposed to synthetics running human personalities uploaded from Earth) will be grown at a cellular level. Both organics and synthetics would be grown from local materials.
posted by musofire at 3:26 PM on May 1, 2010
Generally you would want to boost as little mass as possible out to Titan. Basically information, and things that can replicate themselves, whether organic organisms or synthetic ones. Likely your colony is built by nanobots responding to software beamed from Earth, and your food (assuming you want to put actual humans up there, as opposed to synthetics running human personalities uploaded from Earth) will be grown at a cellular level. Both organics and synthetics would be grown from local materials.
posted by musofire at 3:26 PM on May 1, 2010
Although both coffee and tea do well in the shade, either species would probably still need grow lamps given that Saturn receives about 1% of the solar radiation of earth.
posted by Tsuga at 4:07 PM on May 1, 2010
posted by Tsuga at 4:07 PM on May 1, 2010
I kept reading this as a "doomed colony on Titan."
Now that I'm reading it correctly...
I wonder which kind of tea would work best? For example Yerba maté provides many of the health and stimulant properties of coffee and tea but seems to tolerate high shade and grow quite easily without taking as much from the soil. This might mean it would need less hydroponic fertilizer brought from earth than traditional tea or coffee. Maté also uses the stems of the plant, so if you wanted to grow and use most of what you've grown without waste, it would seem to have a good return.
Either way, I would vote for some species of tea because as sculpin mentioned, it only requires the leaf or bud, not the production of a seed.
posted by jardinier at 5:30 PM on May 1, 2010
Now that I'm reading it correctly...
I wonder which kind of tea would work best? For example Yerba maté provides many of the health and stimulant properties of coffee and tea but seems to tolerate high shade and grow quite easily without taking as much from the soil. This might mean it would need less hydroponic fertilizer brought from earth than traditional tea or coffee. Maté also uses the stems of the plant, so if you wanted to grow and use most of what you've grown without waste, it would seem to have a good return.
Either way, I would vote for some species of tea because as sculpin mentioned, it only requires the leaf or bud, not the production of a seed.
posted by jardinier at 5:30 PM on May 1, 2010
Coffee's actually pretty hard to grow on Earth. Tea would be much easier.
posted by chairface at 11:12 PM on May 1, 2010
posted by chairface at 11:12 PM on May 1, 2010
In Gardens of the Sun the genetic scientists in the outer solar system develop a kind of quick grow moss which they dry and use as a tea substitute. I think they have a coffee substitute as well? If you'd never known Earth original you might not miss them.
posted by communicator at 1:46 AM on May 2, 2010
posted by communicator at 1:46 AM on May 2, 2010
chairface has it. Coffee is very, very picky about all sorts of environmental factors. I suspect the residents of a domed city on Titan would be more concerned with creating an environment that would grow people well rather than coffee.
There are good reasons why real coffee is often a huge luxury in SF.
posted by QIbHom at 12:58 PM on May 3, 2010
There are good reasons why real coffee is often a huge luxury in SF.
posted by QIbHom at 12:58 PM on May 3, 2010
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posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:51 PM on May 1, 2010