Looks like the it's the Starlog one. Will keep my eye out in case I come across the other.
Re-Watching Space: 1999
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Looks like the it's the Starlog one. Will keep my eye out in case I come across the other.
Hundreds of millions of people live just fine as vegetarians. Whole-grain rice and beans together provide enough protein, and fruits and vegetables can provide all other necessary nutrients.
Cool. The Starlog stuff was good, but what little I've been able to see of Young's work, he took things up a notch or two.
We see the hydroponics section later in the season. As meat would have had to be shipped up from Earth pre-Breakaway it was perhaps always a rarity in the Alphan diet.
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Makes sense I suppose. But if there was space somewhere downstairs they could maybe raise chickens (meat AND eggs) or something at least. Maybe a few goats for milk? Honestly not sure how many of each of those you'd need for the needs of approximately 300 people or how much room that would take.
Meanwhile:
Collision Course
Moon misses collision with an asteroid only to find it heading for a really big planet. Koenig gets sucked up into a large spacecraft and meets a member of the Bene Gesserit… sorry, the Queen of Atheria who explains that the moon and Atheria have been destined to smoosh into each other for about a million years or so, Koenig goes back to Alpha and, predictably, no one believes his story. A struggle ensues and Koenig prevents the Alphans attempt to avoid collision and then nothing really happens. Arra and the Atherians evidently ascend to a high plane of existence, but Alpha is still in it's usual predicament. Okay, fine.
Raising meat animals is just way too resource-intensive and area-intensive to be practical in space colonies. The only sensible approach for self-sustaining space habitats would be vegetarianism. Well, vat-grown meat from animal cell cultures could also work, but that's not a technology we would've had in 1999 even if the space program had progressed as the show predicted.
Ben Bova's 1987 book Welcome to Moonbase suggests on-site farming of crops, meat production (rabbit, goat, pork, chicken) and aquaculture (trout, catfish, shrimp). If it's good enough for Bova, it's good enough for me. Never known him to break the envelope too badly when it comes to science and realism in his work. And just because "millions" of people are vegetarians, doesn't everyone wants to be.
Which is where vat-grown meats come in (although many sworn carnivores are already starting to come around to things like the Impossible Burger now that they've found ways to make them taste more like meat). But we're not talking about "want," we're talking about survival. A fully self-sustaining artificial biosphere is a difficult and tenuous thing to achieve. And it's a well-known fact that you can feed far more people with far less strain on the ecology if they're vegetarians rather than meat-eaters. A limited amount of small-animal farming might be sustainable if it's a relatively small part of the diet, and if the artificial environment is stable and robust enough to handle it. For something like Moonbase Alpha, which was forced to become self-sufficient earlier and more abruptly than ever expected, I'm not sure that kind of stability can be presumed to be the case -- especially since they have no fallback if the ecosystem fails.
For that matter, few humans throughout history or in the world today have the luxury of basing their food choices purely on what they want. That's a First World way of looking at it. Most people on Earth get by mostly on rice, beans, tubers, etc. and only occasionally get meat as a luxury. For a space habitat, especially a relatively young one forced by an emergency to become fully self-sustaining, it's logical to see it more in Third World terms, an environment defined by scarcity and uncertain survival. And that means diet isn't about what people "want" but about what they can manage to farm sustainably with limited resources.
But before the Moon cast off for parts unknown, they could have been getting a great amount of supplies from Earth, including packaged meat, despite being self-sufficient.
I'm talking about what the best option would be for open-ended, long-term self-sufficiency. Packaged foods would run out.
Besides, shipping mass out of Earth's gravity well is very energy-intensive and expensive, unless you've got a space elevator or a magic antigravity system. Foods from Earth would probably be a high-end luxury item for spacers due to the sheer effort and expense of getting them.
And I'm talking the sorts of facilities that they may have already had in pace before the unpredictable disaster befell the moon. If you were trying to build a self-sufficient base it would make sense to give the farming and other things I mentioned a shot rather than solely relying on shipping everything up from Earth.
Yes, that's my point! I've been explicitly talking about self-sufficiency since this topic first came up! Why are you arguing if you agree?
I'm sorry, but did you miss the part where you disagreed with me? https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/re-watching-space-1999.301200/page-8#post-13099361
Just as an example: 300 Alphans x 3 meals a day x 20 years would be 6,570,000 MREs that would have been required to be stored on-base prior to leaving earth orbit.
The on-going theme of season one (as in Collision Course) is that in a universe we don't understand faith beats science. I disagree with that, but it is the stance of Space 1999 (emphasised by a late season one episode, where act of God is clear), and making it into an inferior Star Trek in season two is a mistake. Let each series take its own approach.
I don't see it as overtly religious, more just magic-realist or surrealist. There were cosmic forces and destiny guiding the journey in defiance of our understanding of physics, yes, but whether that was God or just some advanced cosmic consciousness that our concept of God only vaguely approximates was left ambiguous. After all, if our science is inadequate to understand the true nature of the universe, then surely our religion would be as well.
Well, I only referenced God (or act of God) in regard to the one episode where the dialogue is pretty explicit: the Moon stops, inexplicably. Referring that back to other episodes makes sense, but is retconning.
I agree that any human concept of God is well short of understanding what 1999 fans call the MUF. Point is that it is beyond human understanding.
I agree that any human concept of God is well short of understanding what 1999 fans call the MUF. Point is that it is beyond human understanding.
Back to business:
Death's Other Dominion
Interesting for the guest characters mostly. Brian Blessed is always fun to watch and a perfect choice here for the Shakespearian vibe going on between him and Captain Jack. Some good looking ice planet sets - really good for an indoor shoot. Sure lot of stuff getting thrown out of our solar system in odd ways isn't there? The Moon, the Uranus Expedition, etc.
Death's Other Dominion
Interesting for the guest characters mostly. Brian Blessed is always fun to watch and a perfect choice here for the Shakespearian vibe going on between him and Captain Jack. Some good looking ice planet sets - really good for an indoor shoot. Sure lot of stuff getting thrown out of our solar system in odd ways isn't there? The Moon, the Uranus Expedition, etc.
