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.
You need that living habitate to survive 6 months in 0g minimum, plus move it planetside without breaking anything.
You could expand the habitate to a larger area later, true, but there’s still like 7 mass cycles that need to be maintained long term, and this system needs to be robust enough to trust a few dozen people to. Otherwise, it’s just an extension of Earth’s biosphere and is dependent on regular resupply.
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.
You need that living habitate to survive 6 months in 0g minimum, plus move it planetside without breaking anything.
You could expand the habitate to a larger area later, true, but there’s still like 7 mass cycles that need to be maintained long term, and this system needs to be robust enough to trust a few dozen people to. Otherwise, it’s just an extension of Earth’s biosphere and is dependent on regular resupply.
Earth is pretty much just a big one. Jury is still out on our ability to maintain it.