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mhornberger t1_j8ehu1i wrote

You have to clarify what quality of life you're comfortable with. If you only require mere survival for your residents, it's probably possible. You can make some nutritional goo from algae or some other scalable process that won't require tons of farmland.

But if you want plants, that's going to take space. Even with vertical farming or whatnot, you're going to need space. Space ships on Star Trek etc were not even remotely realistic, or they assumed tech that was basically a magical plot device, such as replicators that can just produce a cup of "tea, Earl Grey, hot" molecule by molecule, on demand. IRL, you'd probably either be growing the plants, or drinking something produced by precision fermentation or cellular agriculture that would approximate the beverage. Such as they're doing with coffee now, with cellular agriculture.

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