this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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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.