Grow food in orbit

Put a Greenhouse on a station, keep a botanist aboard the ship, open it once you are in orbit, keep its grow lights lit through every night side, and it turns the crew's waste back into food.

You need this when a crew is staying up longer than the food you can carry: a station, a long trip, a base.

• You own the Greenhouses tech node, which sells the Greenhouse. For the wide stack, Wide Greenhouses sells the Greenhouse L.
• A Botanist on the roster, free to fly. Nothing grows on a ship with no botanist aboard — and one botanist, in any seat on the ship, works every greenhouse on it. Botanists come onto the recruit board at the Astronaut Center's third level — see Recruiting the Meek.
• An astronaut aboard as well, in a pod: a botanist is a passenger, and a passenger rides only with an astronaut.
• Your rocket can lift it and a real power supply: several solar arrays and a big battery. The grow lights are the heaviest steady load in the game.
• A crew aboard, or waste already stored. The greenhouse makes food out of waste, and every waste store launches empty.

Steps

1. Build it into the stack. In the hangar, open the ‹ Utility drawer and drop the Greenhouse between two parts of the stack. The Greenhouse joins the 4 m stack and the Greenhouse L the 8 m stack; each swells wider through the middle and narrows back to the stack at both ends. Leave it closed: a new one starts with its shutters shut, which is what lets it ride the launch.
2. Put a botanist aboard. Tap any pod, cabin or greenhouse in the hangar and seat one on its Crew row — it does not matter which, because what counts is that a botanist is on the ship. One is enough to grow anything at all; a second and a third raise every harvest, in every greenhouse aboard at once. Each one you seat weighs 80 kg, eats a ration a day like any Meek and draws a little power for their air. The greenhouse's own seat takes anybody, botanist or not.
3. Give it power for the day side. The Greenhouse draws 0.5 u/s the whole time it grows, and the Greenhouse L 2 u/s. In a low orbit over Earth that takes about three SP-6 Twin Arrays for the Greenhouse, or twelve for the Greenhouse L, to run the lights and charge the battery for the night as well. See Deploy a solar panel.
4. Give it a battery for the night side. The lights must never go out. In a low orbit over Earth the shadow lasts long enough to need about 320 u of charge for the Greenhouse and 1,300 u for the Greenhouse L, so carry more than that: a B-400 Battery Bank or two, or a B-1600.
5. Launch and reach orbit. See Reaching orbit. Deploy the solar arrays as soon as you are above the air, and finish your burns before the next step.
6. Open the greenhouse. Tap it and tap Open, or stage it. The shutters slide back over 6 s (10 s for the Greenhouse L). Open, the glass breaks past 2.5 g or 380 K, so do this in orbit and close it again before any hard burn, aerobrake or landing.
7. Check the crop. Tap the greenhouse. Its sheet shows one greyed line: Growing: 4 %, harvest in 23 h 0 min means it is open, the lights are on and the crop is coming. You can also see it without tapping: the lamps under each shelf throw pink light through the glass while the crop grows, and go dark the moment it is closed or short of power — on a night side a working greenhouse is the brightest thing on the ship.
8. Leave it running. A Greenhouse ripens one crop a day and a Greenhouse L one every six hours. What a harvest is worth depends on the botanists aboard: 5 u of food with one, 8 u with two, 10 u with three — and it composts as much waste as it makes food. A crop keeps growing while you are in the hangar or the game is shut.

What you should see

When a crop ripens a line on the flight screen says how much food it harvested, and the food readout at the top left rises by that much while waste falls by the same. A Meek eats one unit of food a day and leaves one unit of waste, so a greenhouse feeds exactly as many Meek as it harvests: a Greenhouse keeps up with five, eight or ten of them by the botanists aboard, and a Greenhouse L — four crops a day — with twenty, thirty-two or forty. The botanists are part of that count: they eat where they work.

If it didn't work

• The sheet says No power: crop lost, restarts when lit. The battery ran flat, usually on the night side of the orbit. The crop is gone and the next one starts from the beginning once there is power. Add a bigger battery, or more arrays so it is full when the shadow starts.
• The crop keeps going back to 0 %. The same thing, happening every orbit. A crop needs a whole day of unbroken power, so a battery that runs dry for a moment each night means it never ripens.
• The sheet says No botanist aboard: nothing grows. There is no botanist anywhere on this ship. Bring one up on the next flight, or walk one across from a ship alongside; a botanist in any seat will do. Nothing grew while there was none aboard, and the crop that was growing when the last one left is gone.
• The sheet says Ripe: waiting for 5 waste. The crop is grown but there is not enough waste aboard to harvest it. It waits without drawing power, and is harvested as soon as the crew has left that much. More botanists aboard means a bigger harvest and more waste to pay for it — 8 u with two, 10 u with three — so a big harvest needs a big crew leaving waste. A new station needs a few days of a crew eating before its first harvest.
• The sheet says Closed: nothing grows. Tap Open. A closed greenhouse grows nothing, and closing it lost the crop that was growing.
• The greenhouse broke up. It was open under more than 2.5 g or heated past 380 K: an ascent, a burn, air or a landing. Keep it closed for all of those.
• Food stopped rising although crops ripen. Every food store aboard is full, and what does not fit is lost. Carry a Cargo Bay loaded with room for food, or let the crew eat it down.
• Nothing grows on the launch pad. A ship standing on the pad before its launch spends and grows nothing. Once it has flown, a landed ship runs its crops whether you are flying it or have left it.