I was doing some reading about ballistic missile submarines and

>what prevents a form of energy lethal to all life on earth from producing edible food

Hmm, I wonder...

>>33282045

Uhhh, what. The reactor doesn't synthesize shit. It makes steam. Steam drives turbine generators (power) and engines (propulsion).

Oxygen is produced from electrolysis, CO2 and other gasses are sent through various machines that either extract it from the air or use catalysts to convert it into water or methanol.

It'd probably be a lot easier to just use resupply vessels for food and parts (this is important, shit breaks) than try and find a way to synthesize those things with a nuclear reactor, which is almost assuredly impossible.

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>>33282045
>What prevents it from making food for the crew? Is there some way to use the nuclear reactor to generate food for the crew complement?

Reactor just provides juice. Electricity.

So, can you eat electricity anon?

If you can share the secret.

No, most of us can't eat electricity. We can use it to make food, absolutely. Powers the stove, etc. But we still need some foodSTUFF to cook, see?

>>33282094

Resupply between a sub and another vessel is incredibly difficult and pretty much never done. We just pull back in to port and grab more shit. It's pretty rare for a sub to be like, "Oh shit we out of food," except back when the GWOT kicked off and deployments were extended to keep putting warheads on foreheads.

>>33282121
Ok well OP's alternative is to use the nuclear reactor to somehow create food. Which of the two seems easier to you?

Some form of high yield hydroponics is theoretically possible using lamps, powered by the unlimited electricity, however, it would be less hassle to use the same volume of submarine to store massive tubs of peanut butter (and probably some vitamin pills).

>>33282045
Star trek replicators?

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>>33282045
>the nuclear reactor can synthesize enough fuel for the engines and air/water for the crew.


I'm not 100% certain, but I think that what this means is that the nuclear reactor provides power to devices that recycle water on board instead of synthesizing it. Take the ISS for example. Used water is boiled to separate the relatively clean water from all of the waste, then the separated water is probably sterilized even further, then is used for consumption. I have no idea how air is provided on board a submarine, but I'd imagine that it is also recycled in one way or another.

The reason food can't be recycled is because all of the nutrients are already absorbed in the body. Although a small amount of usable energy leaves in the form fecal matter, it's not enough to be recycled. Even if you could recycle it, it would probably be bland / disgusting seeing how it came from feces. Good food and a good chef also plays a huge role in crew morale, especially when you're inside of a tin can 24/7 for months on end.
So until we get replicators as seen in Star Trek, ships and subs will have to depend on food stocks and chefs.

>>33282178

We do not recycle water. Air, yes. Water, fuck no.

We used to have huge distilling plants that took salt and everything else out of seawater. Now it's done with reverse osmosis, which is much more simple. Strips everything from the water, then we use bacteria to make it drinkable and not leave you pissing out your asshole. It's super efficient and running out of water doesn't happen unless the RO unit breaks.

You would need to convert a substantial portion of the ship to a hydroponics facility in order to grow enough food for the crew. Those facilities would require additional crew to oversee on an already crowded boat.

Since a sub is a closed system with no way to get additional fertilizer, all human waste would have to be added to the setup as well. Even if you eliminated 99.99999% of the bacteria from the night soil, the remaining 0.00001% would have ideal growing conditions, leading to a possible health hazard. And disease outbreaks on a sub are really, really bad.

In short, it's theoretically possible, but acts as a major detriment to the sub's operational abilities. Better to stock the boat with 3 months of food and resupply every 90 days.

>>33282154

Peanut butter runs out way too fast, dudes love that shit. When food gets low, we get fucking cheesy bread every day. Maybe a chicken wheel if you're lucky. Vitamin pills are not supplied, if you're stopped up from a lack of fiber that's your fucking problem.

Submarining is far from pleasant sometimes.

And while shit and lamps can make food through hydroponics, those would take up far too much space to be viable. And no matter how much food you have, the crew's gonna get a mite homesick, stir crazy, and outright fucking insane eventually anyway.

>>33282230

>far from pleasant sometimes

thats industry slang for "always"

>>33282203
Ah, I see. I thought that submarines recycle water the same way as the ISS does seeing that both environments are isolated from the outside for a fairly long period of time, but thanks for clearing that out for me

How many days of emergency rations are there on the subs? They have to have a ton of MREs stored away some where in case of war.

>>33282203
I don't think we generally recycle air. Stripping the CO2 from air is generally a simple chemical reaction, but converting it back to O2 is difficult. Much easier to jest electrolyze water.

>>33282265

Nope. Never seen MREs onboard. You see, for most people the military requires nutrition standards to met to some degree. Not for us. When food is low, we just eat less. Food is rationed based on the mission, and there's always some extra breathing room in case an extension occurs. The worst I've heard of is one boat was feeding their guys one chicken wheel and piece of bread a day, you'd get 1/4 of each at every meal, so guys would have to attend all 4 meals just to get a full chicken wheel and bread for that day.

We get paid extra for a reason.

>>33282271
But you get chlorine gas also. You don't want to play with chlorine in a sealed box.

>>33282271

The CO2 is stripped and it's sent right back out on its way. O2 generators aren't being ran 24/7. We breathe recycled farts.

>>33282295
That sucks. In case of war fire off all the nukes and die if starvation.

>>33282306
From what? Electrolysis? Not if you use water from the desalinization plant, which is how it works. All you get is oxygen and hydrogen. CO2 is just passed though lime (the chemical, not the fruit) which releases no additional gases.

>>33282178
>The reason food can't be recycled is because all of the nutrients are already absorbed in the body. Although a small amount of usable energy leaves in the form fecal matter, it's not enough to be recycled. Even if you could recycle it, it would probably be bland / disgusting seeing how it came from feces.
It actually can be and is recycled, we call it agriculture. The issue is that it takes a lot of time and space and other inputs that would be very difficult to provide on a ship.

>>33282327
Of*

>>33282306

Chlorine? From where?

Electrolysis produces O2 and Hydrogen. Hydrogen is bad, we convert it into other shit with catalysts to make it less explody. CO2 scrubbers use MEA which doesn't produce any harmful byproducts, just makes you smell like fucking amine and give you cancer probably.

>>33282333
The salt in the sea water will break down into chlorine and something else.

>>33282319
Yeah, in a sealed compartment you'll die of CO2 poisoning well before hypoxia. I should have been more clear that by air recycling I meant the CO2 wasn't recycled into more oxygen. The O2 is just generated and added when needed.

>>33282363
I've come to the understanding you don't know what the term "Desalination" means.

Is the chicken wheel what I think it is? Like one of those white castle chicken rings?

>>33282363

You're wrong buddy. We use distilling plants or RO units to desalinize the water, then it's filtered a few more times. Water running through O2 generators is demineralized.

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>>33282045
Just have a constant supply of crabs and toss them in with the reactor. Then you'll multiply the amount of crab you have ten fold!

>>33282379

I dunno what those are, but chicken wheels are just patties of probably not real chicken we get in massive bags. They're the staple of every submariners diet.

>>33282350
>>33282333
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_production

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>What prevents it from making food for the crew?
It could power an onboard greenhouse but how big would it need to be to feed the crew?
what about all the other stuff like vitamins and shit that humans need?

>>33282397
Yep, you don't know what desalinization is. Here, educate yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination

>>33282045
Wouldnt be possible for a submarine to have a diving hatch underneath. Thus making it possible to some people dive to hunt some fishes.

>>33282397

Nigga please, you're starting to rustle me. Chlorine is made with electrolysis but NOT during the process on submarines. Running seawater straight through a LPE would make chlorine, but we don't do that. I'm a fucking qualified submariner and I'm telling you, nothing we do onboard a submarine runs a risk of producing chlorine. We technically monitor it in the batter compartment, but modern lead acid batteries on subs are so ridiculously over engineered that the chances of that happening are near-zero.

Once again, we electrolysize DI water, which has no salt, chlorine, or any other minerals in it. It's pure H20, the type that'd give you the mega-shits if you drank because it'd strip the minerals out of your cells.

>>33282383

I've actually had a crab pop out through the countermeasures launcher when loading it with a water temperature probe. The TM supervising busting out his knife and stabbed it with no hesitation like it has happened a million times before.

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>>33282045

>Is there some way to use the nuclear reactor to generate food for the crew complement?

Delicious!

>>33282456
Pretty sure the whole thing about DI water being bad for you is an urban legend. Your saliva, stomach acid, and bile have enough salts dissolved between them to make the difference negligible. By the time it hits your blood stream it's no different from any other water.

>>33282501

Pretty sure I've seen guys drink it and prove you wrong. Drinking a cup of it won't do anything too bad, but drink it for a day and you're gonna be best friends with a water closet. We use bromine to make it drinkable. I've also seen guys drink simple green and orange muscle. Boredom is a terrible thing.

>>33282058
FPBP

>>33282045
Okay, see here's the challenge: you need to use the raw materials sustainably available aboard a ship - reactor energy, whatever you can extract from seawater, and the CO2 and shit (I mean literal shit, phecal matter) expelled by the crew, and figure out a way to make carbs and protein out of that. That shit ain't that simple.
>>33282154
Can you do that with (optionally desalinated) seawater and human shit?

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>>33282203
>We do not recycle water.
Here in Southern Commiefornia we do.

>>33282230

I just said peanut butter, as it was the first really calorie dense food I could think of that I'm willing to eat as-is with a spoon.

I'm sure you could take peanut butter, mix in essential nutrients (including dietary fibre) and fill a submarine with tubs of the stuff for a super long patrol. Mental health of the crew may suffer, however.

>>33282045
Wtf am i reading?

>>33282616

>Can you do that with (optionally desalinated) seawater and human shit?

Sure it's possible, however internal volume of a submarine is at an absolute premium. The proportion of the submarine you would have to turn over to food production to make a difference would vastly increase its cost and reduce its capabilities.

>>33282045
Not ballistic missile subs. Nuclear powered subs.

>>33282045
>What prevents it from making food for the crew? Is there some way to use the nuclear reactor to generate food for the crew complement?
It would still be cruise limited for repair and maintenance plus periodic refit/refuel availability periods. Even if they were completely unlimited by food (don't forget about basic food luxury items which make life worth living - you can't have sailors eating tasteless foodpaste for a year long cruise and expect them to sign back up after all the training money you've dumped into them when their hitch is up), they'd still want those boats back in roughly every six months to do pierside maintenance tasks so things don't get away from them.

to turn this into a semi-serious question, would it be possible to fish from a submarine? is there any practical way to get the fish inside the sub?

>>33282629
reminder that this squeeze on Iran caused California almond growers to go into overdrive and almond trees require lots and lots of water

>>33282045
Guaranteed. Fucking. Replies.
I think /k/ just enjoys being baited by this point.

>>33282740
Technically, for a boomer (SSBN, which typically spends 6 months doing 5 knots or less in a figure-8 once their patrol area is reached) this might be possible. However, nothing cruises or spends more time than necessary at depths that would be useful for most types of fishing. Spending a ton of time above the thermocline in the upper Epipelagic Zone where most fishable ocean biomass hangs out exposes a submarine to needless detection by surface ship hull-mounted sonar and MAD sweeps.

In practical terms, with the above in mind plus all the trouble you'd need to go to from an engineering standpoint, it makes way, way more sense to just build the hull larger for more stores if you're that concerned about cruise duration. You wouldn't be able to get all the nutrients you need just from fishing anyway, so you're still duration hard limited by whatever roughage, greens and other essentials you can carry along with everything else, just like an age of sail ship.

>>33282799
couldn't the sub just open the forward vents and suck in a bunch of fish from the seawater

it'd be like a trawler

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>>33282691
Maybe some genetically-engineered r-cyanobacteria would be more space-efficient. Soylent green up in this bitch.

>>33282779
I think he's actually serious. /k/ spends way too much time masturbating to incredibly unlikely bunker concepts featuring dubious fully self-contained technologies and concepts. If they're honest, a very large percentage of /k/ thinks long-term closed system environmental systems are extremely doable on a DIY basis, in spite of the fact that NASA and other space agencies have been trying and failing to perfect the technologies for decades.

>>33282812
Bait, but lazy, stupid bait. You deserve the roasting you get for this bit of incredible stupidity.

>>33282471
What'd you do with the crab?

>>33282799
how deep are we talking here?

>>33282817
You are right, but anime children's cartoons draw a lot of children and yungdumbfucks so the bunker fetish is permanent. They exist to shitpost, while only BunkerAnon (who BOUGHT his bunkers, bless his heart) has a serious bunker and he could only afford it because it's surplus to military requirements. Bunkerfags have no real idea why they want bunkers, hence the endless unresearched posts. They should be banned.

>>33282855
of course they know, it's fer da habbening

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>>33282799
>Sub stays down at 1000 feet
>Trolls the epipelagic zone using buoyant upriggers
Talk about your n-dimensional next-level trolling.

>>33282854
Depends on where the thermocline is; this is variable by hundreds of feet depending on where you are and atmospheric/EM radiation/temperature/current conditions. Generally just under it. The thermocline is, by coincidence, generally the lower limit for much of the regularly fished oceanic biomass.

>>33282471
I'd take that fucking thing right to a cook and demand he cooked it for me. I'm assuming I wouldn't do to well on a sub.

>>33282883
You do realize the entire point of a submarine, especially a boomer (the only type this would even be remotely possible on due to operational patterns), is to stay as dead quiet as fucking possible, right? Trawling a couple tons of buoyed nets and lines several hundred feet above the boat at 5 knots would create more noise than the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus while being buggered by the entire compliment of Vatican cardinals.

You can actually hear the water "sing" through trawler nets from considerable distance on sonar.

>>33282899
>I'm assuming I wouldn't do to well on a sub.
You might actually fit right in. Bubbleheads, especially lifer bubbleheads, tend to be autistic in both habit and humor.

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>>33282914
>more noise than the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus while being buggered by the entire compliment of Vatican cardinals.

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>>33282930
I wouldn't be joking. If I've ate nothing but fucking chicken patties and along came Mr Crab. I'm going to want to eat the nigger. Rather than oblige some stiff officer saying "oh you can't do that" Or lazy fucking cook not wanting to spend a few minutes since I'm assuming I wouldn't be allowed to cook it myself.

I've always wondered about acquiring food while on a ship. Why don't they just fucking fish? I mean, sure, you need veggies, fruit and other shit too, and that's only available when you dock, but I've rarely ever seen anyone be allowed to fish. Sure you can say that doesn't look professional, but you're in the middle of the fucking ocean, no one's gonna see or care.

>>33282968
>some stiff officer
>lazy fucking cook
You need to remember that you're stuck in a metal can with these people for 6 months at a time. Sub crews tend to be a lot closer and comfier than others because you have to figure out early on how not to be constantly up each other's assholes (pun not intended). That's part of where the 100 sailors-50 couples jokes come from. It's a tight community. You see fewer completely useless fuckwads wearing their fish, and the officers tend to be tighter with enlisted. You still get total oxygen thieves, of course, but they tend to get sent to SUW if they shit the bed often enough.

>>33282993
You try fishing at 10+ knots. Not even supply ships routinely cruise slower than that. The only time you might is while tailing your towed sonar, and you do NOT want to foul tens of millions of dollars worth of hydro-transducers just for some fucking sushi.

You're never really going slow enough to throw lines out, and even if you did you'd never actually feed the ship with anything less than a full net trawling rig or a commercial line setup with dropped buoys. Neither of these things are remotely practical on a warship.

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>>33283024
So you're telling me someone would cook the crab? :3

>>33283064
I'm telling you if you'd managed to figure out how to live with your shipmates without being a complete shitbag, they might cook the crab. But you'd probably get a bite of it and have it shared around to everyone else. And it would be a complete novelty and little else, as the boat already has a supply of frozen crab for periodic meals.

>>33283116
Well of course I'd share...

I was in the infantry for five years after all. Now THAT is riddled with shitbags.

>>33282295
What is a chicken wheel?

>>33282121
>putting warheads on foreheads.
Kek

>>33283213
>I was in the infantry for five years after all.
Holy fuck. You'd love boat life after eating that shit. You eat so much better in a spam can, man.

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>>33283240
I really don't know why they feed sailors these things.

>>33282121
>We just pull back in to port and grab more shit.
So basically forward resupply of submarines requires capture or construction of sub bases?

>>33283268
I'm not putting officer dick on a pussy pedestal. If I joined the navy it would be commissioned.

>>33283305
There's a reason the Russians are so touchy about their Syrian naval base and a reason why the Chinese are so dead set on getting a naval base near the Persian Gulf. If you want to operate for extended periods away from your coastline, project meaningful power or actually be able to protect your economic interests, investing in a naval port has been de rigueur since Dutch worldwide naval supremacy and before.

>>33283393
>>33283305
why not just construct underwater mobile sub bases

build it at home, launch it, keep it 250 feet underwater and have its location only known to friendly subs

>>33282114

>He can't eat electricity.
What a casual.

>>33282045
>people like this are allowed to own firearms

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>>33283502

>>33282501
Having worked on desalinisation plant, once you get below about 10-11 ppm salts, the water becomes downright unpleasant to drink. It feels harsh down the back of your throat and any lower than that, it will cause a slight lurch in your stomach. We always sterilise and re-mineralise before putting it into the drinking water system
t. merchant mariner

>>33283813
Never said it tasted good. But the whole thing about it leaching minerals out of cells is bullshit.

>>33282501
>>33282527
Distilled water doesn't taste very good, either--you need some trace minerals just to give it the natural flavor that we associate with fresh water.

>>33282632
Peanut butter cups made out of peanut butter and marine-grade emergency chocolate with extra Metamucil.

Yum!

>Tfw you're hawking rolls of dip for cans of Chef Boyardee and fiber pills

So you can get water and oxygen from the sea, what's to stop you from using the reactor to power UV lights or something to grow crops?

It probably wouldn't create enough to be self-sufficient but it could help extend the range a bit longer

>>33284179
>undertake massive rebuild to add hydroponics facility to an already incredibly cramped sub
>generate maybe an extra month of supplies before everyone starves to death
>undertake massive rebuild to create storage space
>add an extra six months of supplies to the 90 days already present on board

>>33283291
Kek

>>33282253
The submarine is surrounded by water, why would they recycle it? Come on guy, use your head.

>>33284602
Well, if he didn't understand the energy budget differential between desal and recycling it might make sense.

>>33283987
>what is hypotonic and hypertonic for 500 Alex.

>>33284219
Why not simply grow kale instead of having a floor?

>>33285084
>Adds a drop of bile to 100 ml of tap water
>Adds a drop of bile to 100 ml of DI water
>Difference in cellular osmosis is nil

>>33285247
But for how long?

>>33282209
Bitch, please. You have a nuclear reactor. Just run the shit water near the reactor between the neutron shield and the gamma ray shield and it'll kill all of the bacteria.

>>33285300
...permanently? Your question really doesn't make sense. Bile salts, saliva, stomach acid, and any food in the body will balance the mineral content of DI water well before it enters the blood stream. In most drinking water, there's about 75 mg of dissolved salts per liter. On average, you consume forty times that in sodium chloride alone. My point is that any osmotic effects of DI water are negligible when consumed in a normal diet.

>>33285321
They use Co-60, which decays into low energy gamma and beta radiation for food sterilization. You cannot induce radiation in substances irradiated in that manner. The reactors in a sub use materials that emit higher energy radiation, including neutrons. These can induce radioactivity. At levels guaranteed to sterilize human waste, which is mostly made up of bacteria, you would also produce large amounts of some really fun low mass radioactive isotopes. Have fun feeding those to plants.

>>33285447
Well I'll be...

Any reason why I would think otherwise? Why was I mislead?

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>>33285526
Probably because you saw pic related in a science class

It's valid, but people (including teachers) see it and don't realize there's a difference between putting a small number of cells in a large amount of DI water, and putting the same amount of DI water into a functioning body.

That's not to say I want to drink the stuff. It tastes weird and it does tend to dry out mucous membranes so you still feel thirsty after drinking it. But it won't hurt you.

>>33285511
I said between the neutron shield and the gamma ray shield. The gamma ray shield is outside the neutron shield.

>>33283240
I also want to know.

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>>33285576
> /k/ The more you know!

Well thank you. All I have for payment is some CarniK Con. I hope this will suffice.