asking with no experience in this field, what about those 50+ year old glass jars with worms and plants and stuff in them? Do those not count for some reason?
You’d also need to deploy the system, or find a way to maintain it all the way from Earth orbit to Mars’ surface.
You can use the spaceship as a habitat! That way you don’t need to ship an extra habitat … an advantage of reusable rockets.
As for the ship size, starship has about 1000 m³ volume of living space, so you can have a mini-greenhouse in there for growing some vegetables and salad (since those have to be fresh). You have to bring high-calorie food though or grow it outside, since it consumes more area.
asking with no experience in this field, what about those 50+ year old glass jars with worms and plants and stuff in them? Do those not count for some reason?
They work, but there are no humans inside them.
biologically, humans aren’t that special. if you can reliably sustain insects in an ecosystem, it’s not that big of a jump to feed humans as well.
You need a very big one though, and humans need a more varied diet than soil bugs.
You’d also need to deploy the system, or find a way to maintain it all the way from Earth orbit to Mars’ surface.
You can use the spaceship as a habitat! That way you don’t need to ship an extra habitat … an advantage of reusable rockets.
As for the ship size, starship has about 1000 m³ volume of living space, so you can have a mini-greenhouse in there for growing some vegetables and salad (since those have to be fresh). You have to bring high-calorie food though or grow it outside, since it consumes more area.
Earth is pretty much just a big one. Jury is still out on our ability to maintain it.