Food Production

The chief purpose of the food delivery and storage system is to deliver an adequate dietary regime to the astronauts on a day to day basis.  For planning purposes, at least 3000 kilocalories per person should be available from foods. Food will be grown in a controlled environment for a long duration mission to Mars.  

Plants placed in a controlled environment chamber often yield much better than their counterparts in the field.  This is mainly due to the fact that environmental stress is minimized in controlled environments.  In a controlled environment, such as ours, we will have to control temperature, humidity, lighting, water and nutrients such that to obtain optimal growth in the plant chamber.

Two sets of food packets are proposed:

         A                     B            
   Wheat                Rice
   Potato             Soybean
   Lettuce         Sweetpotato
   Radish             Peanut
Strawberry          Tomato

The photoperiod for both the packets of proposed food is 12/12 hrs. and the humidity required is 65 RH.  Set A requires a temperature of 20/16 ºC and Set B requires a temperature of 26/22 ºC for optimum growth.

Note:  Warm temperature crops could be grown cooler by sacrificing some yield but growing cooler crops under warmer conditions can lead to little or no edible biomass.  For our purposes, we will maintain optimum growth temperature for whichever set of crops our crew members vote to choose.