Posted on 07/05/2016 11:34:58 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
When a Navy submarine first deploys to sea, it is stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. A week in, the lettuce in the salad bar turns translucent, the tomatoes become mushier, and thawed fruit is common. Eventually, canned sauces and beans and dehydrated potatoes replace all fresh produce.
If research the US military has started is successful, a submarine crew’s diet won’t be bland much longer. The military has begun a $100,000 project to grow plants hydroponically – in a nutrient solution instead of soil – at the Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center near Boston. Although the first two rounds of experiments have been on land in a 40-foot shipping container-turned-laboratory, the military hopes to one day grow plants inside the hull of a submarine.
The undertaking is just one of numerous projects aimed at to growing fruits and vegetables in the most unusual, even unnatural, environments to fuel manned journeys into the depths of Earth and space. As the military tries to perfect hydroponics in submarines, leafy greens and other vegetables are being grown in space and in the ocean in desalinated water.
Any progress made will benefit ocean and space explorers both physically and mentally, Erik Biksa, editor and co-founder of Grozine, a hydroponics magazine, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Carbon monoxide would also work, and be cheaper.
Space is probably more of a problem than power.
this
My initial reaction to this was "An Army Travels on Its Stomach", anything that makes things better for submariners, I'm all for. But if FReepers who have served in subs think it's a bad idea .... that's good enough for me. A wise man defers to experience.
Given the average turnaround on nuclear boats, how many vegetables could they grow, long enough to be harvested? Once harvested, how many meals could be made before needing to replant?
The USN only has nuke subs.
Yes, it absolutely can be done.
Nearly unlimited fresh water, electricity and nutrients.
Most of the crew is on 3 section rotation. If you are not warfare qualified, you spend the next shift eating,training and qualifying. The enlisted, typically spend 30-45 minutes after watch cleaning. That cuts into the second 8 hours as well. They also have a 4 hour field day, and about 1-2 4 - 5 hour drill sessions a week. With this, they are already guaranteed a 70 hour work week when at sea. Then they have division training, department training, and crew training at 45 minutes - 60 minutes at a pop. I won’t get into preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance.
And what about “angles and dangles”. Up to 40 degrees, up down and sideways during rough seas. And vibration/shaking at high speeds. A liquid system will not work. What about vapors and smells given off by the plants. Natural pesticides given off the plant in a contained atmosphere, have not been studied. Many problems and questions.
“Just freeze dry the veggies.”
I agree. As far as vegetable storage is concerned, that certainly would make the most sense: Longest shelf life, requires the least amount of space, and highest nutrient retention, but that’s not what they’re looking into.
Holy Crap!
It would be a frigging modern day mutiny!!!!!!!!
It is one thing for soldiers in the field to forego cooked chow, because that is just the way it has to be sometimes, unfortunately for them.
But to make a conscious choice to make them eat MRE’s?????
I would say that we make that high level idiot eat MREs, and MREs only for six straight months and see how he/she likes it.
OMG. I have never heard anything like that before. It would be nearly hilarious if it weren’t so disturbing!
(Caveat: I KNOW that what you can eat from an MRE is better and more nutritious than what large portions of the world have available for meals, but...why do that to our sub crews out there unless driven by absolute necessity????)
I’m pretty sure they can grow mold. Dark, dank and low air circulation seem to do it.
They eventually came to their senses. There is a legend that when they first proposed the boomers, that the Navy did not want torpedo tubes on them. Then the submarine flag officers said that they aren’t sending subs out without any defensive measures. I don’t know how true that one is. Seems like something they navy might suggest.
Not to mention....MREs are individual meals...because of packaging, they take up much more space to store, and create more trash that needs to be disposed of.
But the primary reason this is a bad idea...crew habitability and morale. People forget...the US Submarine Service is over a century old now, and over the decades there has been a great deal of research and development into how to take care of men at sea in a very confined space. When the sub force went nuclear, these efforts intensified, as food became the sole limitation on how long boats could stay at sea. How submariners are fed today is the culmination of all that hard work, and not happenstance.
Proper nutrition and good food is critical to crew morale and their ability to perform their job under the extreme conditions that exist on a boat at sea...and for that reason, submariners eat better than any other part of the Navy when deployed. While fresh produce is nice to have, it is not a necessity. We get along quite well when it runs out after the first couple of weeks once the hatches are closed.
Now if they could find a way to preserve fresh food longer, like food irradiation, that would be useful. We made a port call in Australia once. Took on stores there...low and behold, we had milk for several weeks after we left—it was irradiated milk that didn’t have to be refrigerated, so we had much more than usual, because it was kept on the shelf like most other food stores.
Growing food on the boat...whoever thought (again) of this idea has obviously disregarded all we’ve already learned. Whatever happened to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
Exactly. These people are idiots, most likely liberals. To them, the concept of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is universally ignored for the concept of “I am the most intelligent person to have ever looked at this issue, and I have a great idea that makes every other way of doing it obsolete and stupid and therefore to be thrown into the trash”.
You are right. At the most fundamental level, it is about morale, a quality that has high value among the Submarine Service, or so I am told.
And..thanks for serving.
That's what I thought too; rekindled memories of: Arno Schmidt [exec chef at the Waldorf] saw the hydroponic set-up I had in my kitchen during the winter [late '60s, early 70s] growing herbs. He immediately set-up a system in the cavernous connecting hallways of the WA's kitchens.
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