Space Beer

Fri, 2016-06-03 20:38

#2

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

I suspect a lot of new

I suspect a lot of new variants on fermented yeast/

Fri, 2016-06-03 20:58

#3

thebluespectre thebluespectre's picture

Hmm?

I have the feeling that Winter ales are more popular than light beers on Mars.

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Fri, 2016-06-03 21:07

#4

Darkening Kaos Darkening Kaos's picture

Space Beer

...at least it will be ice-cold. and on that note, you will probably find that ice distillation will become a more common technique for space citizens. Applejack for everyone!

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Sat, 2016-06-04 03:11

#5

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

No, Comrade Bender. Liquor is

No, Comrade Bender. Liquor is the opiate of the human bourgeoisie. In the glorious worker robot paradise, there will be no liquor. Only efficient synthetic fuels. -Electronic Mother's Day Card, Futurama

Sat, 2016-06-04 03:29

#6

MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture

Well, I dont imagine that

Well, I dont imagine that beside Mars there are any places in Sol that can handle conventional industrial farms. And we go with vertical farming, then maybe also Titan and maybe also Jovian, though with all the shielding they need, volume is still at a huge premium. I would bet that Liquors and Spirits are far more common, in exo colonies, though they hardly get exported due to how expensive gate time is. I assume we're discounting all the booze that a maker can make. Which I assume, is all the booze.

Sat, 2016-06-04 04:11

#7

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

First up, you aren't the only

First up, you aren't the only one wondering this, this seems relevant. http://vostokspacebeer.com/about-the-beer/

jackgraham wrote:
1. Would hops get largely replaced by other things? Would Space Gose (heh) be the norm?

My suspicion is that the spectrum of beers in AF10 is a lot larger than today, so while it wouldn't get replaced, hoppy beers are a proportionately smaller part of the spectrum.

Quote:
2. How do you keep it from exploding in microgravity? 3. Would it be less carbonated? (Because carbonated drinks in microgravity aren't the best).

CO2 bubbles don't naturally separate in microgravity, so carbonation is gross. It goes all the way through digestion, which could be unhealthy, and would be unpleasant. (Burping gas and vomiting become uncomfortably similar actions). I suspect that because of how precisely beer can be made, and the material science available to brewers for containment that detonation isn't a huge risk.

Quote:
4. Where do you put a lagering cave on Mars?

It's basically a climate controlled room for cool brewing, I think basically anywhere with it's own climate controls should work. Digging into Martial soil is probably traditional, but there's nothing preventing hiding one high in a high rise.

Quote:
5. Holy crap, all the ways nanotech could alter the fermenting process... Homebrewing could be a much less anal retentive operation if you've got Beer Medichines to hunt down wild yeasts & bacteria in the wort.

That changes a lot, there's probably a lot of interesting chemical pathways which can't proceed normally, and that level of control just doesn't exist. Space beer is much better. Enhanced taste also opens up a lot of options for subtlety.

Quote:
6. In confined spaces where cereal crops are tough to grow in abundance, beer might be quite a luxury. Distilled spirits would probably be more common. Having enough crop space to make beer would be a sign of a prosperous habitat. OTOH, Mars probably has beer (some it very crappy) like no one's business.

If you really wanted, you could probably budget cereal crops into life support, (Like the greenhouse in the Kepler station) so beer might be a sign of prosperity, or serious dedication to beer, as it's now a fundamental producer of life, and means eating less fresh green.

Sun, 2016-06-05 14:39

#8

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

I had a player insist that CM

I had a player insist that CM machines could create beer from scratch and that didn't seem right, so brewing would still need to be a thing. I imagine that many a Titanian microcorp generates Kroner via microbrews. With boisterous beerfests and beer gardens.

—

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Sun, 2016-06-05 16:35

#9

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

They probably can, but beer's

They probably can, but beer's a pretty complicated substance, so doing it right isn't simple.

Sun, 2016-06-05 22:10

#10

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

It's all just liquids

uwtartarus wrote:
I had a player insist that CM machines could create beer from scratch and that didn't seem right, so brewing would still need to be a thing.

If anything, beer would be [i]easier[/i] for a maker to make than (semi-)solid textured food. [b]Good[/b] beer may be another story, but that would be a quasi-luxury akin to fine meats, and probably still available from higher-end makers.

Mon, 2016-06-06 11:30

#11

MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture

Well, I guess that depends on

Well, I guess that depends on how a Maker works. How much does it rely on chemical reactions over molecule assembly for the food? If its mostly a Cook in a Box, then it cant really do beer, or soda. Probably couldnt do leaven bread. Or Cheese. If it just builds foodstuff in its final form, then makes it hot or cold, then it can do beer, or cheese. Its not relying on chemical reactions to have the end product form.

Mon, 2016-06-06 12:15

#12

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

"Try Refreshing NuBeer today! Now in Caramel Chew flavour!"

Of course CMs can make beer on demand! They simply need to dissolve the flavour crystals in distilled water and add ethanol to taste! 9 out of 10 can tell the difference, but only 1 out of 10 cares! Really, this is my take on most makers. Drinks are flavoured water, food is flavoured nutrient paste pressed into pleasing shapes. If you want "texture" to your food, you need to shell out.

—

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Mon, 2016-06-06 14:09

#13

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Man, screw the space beer, I

Man, screw the space beer, I wanna know about the space mead. Can those bee-bots make proper honey?

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Tue, 2016-06-07 10:42

#14

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

As long as its not filthy

As long as its not filthy clover flavored

Sat, 2016-06-11 20:47

#15

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

MrWigggles wrote:Well, I

MrWigggles wrote:
Well, I guess that depends on how a Maker works. How much does it rely on chemical reactions over molecule assembly for the food? If its mostly a Cook in a Box, then it cant really do beer, or soda. Probably couldnt do leaven bread. Or Cheese. If it just builds foodstuff in its final form, then makes it hot or cold, then it can do beer, or cheese. Its not relying on chemical reactions to have the end product form.

Makers are machines that can make sure that a Transhuman is keep alive with food and drink. However, its not good food or drink. Flavored liquids, ration bars, and the like. You can pay extra for a good maker, but at some point you might as well get a fabber. Fabbers of the appropriate specialization and CMs should be able to make any kind food or drink.

Sun, 2016-06-12 12:27

#16

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

CMs, Makers and Fabbers

I always mix up these terms, so I decided to double-check. From EP 4th ed. pp.327-328: CMs "can produce any small object, from tools to well-folded suits of clothing to handguns or a bowl of cereal." Fabbers "can make any hand tool or small piece of personal electronics, [...] can turn any organic material into food and drink, and [...] can create any drug or medicine as well as bandages and specialized dressings...[Moderate]" Makers "are specially designed to produce food and drink for the user [...] Models with a wider and better range of flavors and textures are more expensive, but produce food that is considered adequate or occasionally good. [Low to Moderate]" Looking at the descriptions and the costs, my reckoning is that food quality and expense goes roughly as so: Fabber < [Low] Maker < CM < [Moderate] Maker < Grown/Cooked/Brewed Food and Drink I'm guessing that stills, brewing equipment and kitchens would fall under "Tools" per p.326.

Sun, 2016-06-12 16:26

#17

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Cornucopia machines are

Cornucopia machines are [expensive] and make more stuff than Makers.

Sun, 2016-06-12 20:37

#18

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Man,

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Man, screw the space beer, I wanna know about the space mead.

That's CoC, not us. I recommend against it; you might summon a byakhee. Ask Chaosium for further details. ;)

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Mon, 2016-06-13 23:39

#19

Lazarus

Trappedinwikipedia wrote

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Cornucopia machines are [expensive] and make more stuff than Makers.

Conventional makers may not even be nanoassemblers. Based on a lot of the descriptions and things it looks to me more like they may just hold certain raw materials such as protein powder, flavorings, etc. that they mix up and spit out when called for (which would go a long way to explaining the different qualities since in the case of nanoassemblers the only real differences would be speed and memory). I say 'conventional makers' because I think there are a few places where maker-like devices are used and they are simply called makers. One of the vaccsuits is the biggest one I can think of. My guess it that it is really more of a maker/disassembler/nanoassembler combination where the disassembler and assembler are highly specialized and used to keep the supply reserves of a special 'minimaker' filled.

—

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Fri, 2016-06-17 01:29

#20

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

jackgraham wrote

jackgraham wrote:
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Man, screw the space beer, I wanna know about the space mead.
That's CoC, not us. I recommend against it; you might summon a byakhee. Ask Chaosium for further details. ;)

Come on, you can't tell me the Titanian Commonwealth exists and nobody is making space mead! :P

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Tue, 2016-06-21 19:52

#21

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Rose flavored. Or catnip.

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Mon, 2016-07-04 05:41

#22

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

Gruit over Hopping?

I dare say variants of Gruit might appear where Hops is not available. Blends of herbs and spices, quite different in flavor to hops. More likely folks would drink plain old white spirits and flavor them with various bacterial produced flavors.

Fri, 2016-07-29 20:52

#23

jKaiser

I live and work in a town

I live and work in a town with a huge homebrew/alt-brew movement, and I've seen everything from mead (which is surprisingly easy and fun to make) to "beer" made from tea. With the emphasis on small-craft artisan goods in lots of the system, I bet you can find some pretty crazy stuff that blows the pants off the Maker 40/40 you "brew" up in your kitchen cubbyhole. But the biggest thing I imagine being bigger in EP is the yeast options, which so heavily change the flavor of any given drink. Bonus points since it's a product that has a finite lifespan, which gives reason to buy it rather than print...nanobrew...do you print liquids? Whatever. Novelty and quality is how you sell small goods in a nanofabricating society, since small-brew batches won't have blueprints in the first place, and live yeasts and other processes are unpredictable. I mean, Stone brewing's made a fan out of me with their "drink before/after" line of gimmick beers. And unless I missed something, you can't really print living cultures in common nanofab units, right? I imagine most carbonated beers in microgravity come in specialized bulbs, some kind of omnidirectional airlock. What that looks like or the science behind it, I dunno. Or maybe you buy them in keg-centrifuges.

Sat, 2016-07-30 00:40

#24

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

Brewing could give a kick-start

Brewing could give a kick-start to local bread-baking businesses, as happened here on Earth with the widespread use of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces_cerevisiae]brewer's yeast[/url]. I can see yeasts becoming a luxury market, seeded on Mars, Venus, on or habs with advanced hydroponic or aeroponic systems, and shipped from there all across the solar system as stasis cakes. One thing though: carbonated liquids don't fractionate in zero-g, which could lead to disgusting and/or dangerous health implications if consumed. Carbonated beers would only be consumed where there's enough gravity that special containers aren't required in the first place. Unless the bubbles are managed by swimmer nanobots, which might be a possibility for the ultra-expensive stuff.

Sat, 2016-07-30 01:05

#25

jKaiser

I'm reminded of Charlie Boy

I'm reminded of Charlie Boy eating Fugu to deliberately savor the toxin's effects, and now I'm sure there's a line of beverages that replace carbonation with a mild neurotoxin. I mean, if you're drinking one poison for recreation, you might as well double up.

Sat, 2016-07-30 02:26

#26

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

More simply, Medichines can

More simply, Medichines can probably clear dangers from carbonation in 0 g.

Wed, 2016-08-24 15:24

#27

boomzilla

uwtartarus wrote:I had a

uwtartarus wrote:
I had a player insist that CM machines could create beer from scratch

I can't quite remember, but was *I* that player? Canonically, CM machine actually *can*. So why don't you just CM every food product? Well, remember, if the machine can make (nearly) any material good, and its throughput is limited, it will be tasked with also making more important things than beer. So, sure, you can have a cold one without even bothering setting up the fermentation tank or whatever, but, hey, your hab needed the air filters replaced a week ago, and, hey, there is a bad solar storm forecasted, so fixing those superconductors might be a good idea so our storm cellar is functioning. Etc. At least, that's my explanation. I'm still trying to wrap my head around (quasi) post-scarcity econ, haha. As for our particular campaign, I know you gave us a CM, but I'd just use the same argument I presented here if any of us start to go gear crazy: "Yeah, that sounds interesting, that new stealth robot design you want to make. But, the quantum carburetor needs a new microverse battery. Takes about half a day in the CM. You're gonna have to queue up."

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Wed, 2016-08-24 23:29

#28

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

boomzilla wrote:So why don't

boomzilla wrote:
So why don't you just CM every food product? Well, remember, if the machine can make (nearly) any material good, and its throughput is limited, it will be tasked with also making more important things than beer.

A CNC machine can make more things than a milkshake blender. That doesn't mean it can make milkshakes.

Thu, 2016-09-01 09:27

#29

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Except a cornucopia machine

Except a cornucopia machine [i]can[/i] make a milkshake. It probably just has better things to make than milkshakes, so you might find its time more usefully spent making a Maker which can make lots of milkshakes, faster than the CM. But yeah, if you have an hour when you don't need anything from the CM and you fancy a cold beer, or a milkshake, or a beer milkshake, and you don't have a maker, queue it right up in the CM, there's no reason not to.

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Thu, 2016-09-01 10:45

#30

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Except

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Except a cornucopia machine [i]can[/i] make a milkshake. It probably just has better things to make than milkshakes, so you might find its time more usefully spent making a Maker which can make lots of milkshakes, faster than the CM. But yeah, if you have an hour when you don't need anything from the CM and you fancy a cold beer, or a milkshake, or a beer milkshake, and you don't have a maker, queue it right up in the CM, there's no reason not to.

True. What I'm getting at is twofold, though: 1) As you rightly mention, using a CM to make a milkshake is overkill. 2) Since it's likely that Makers make better food than CMs (depending on a given headcanon, perhaps), CMs aren't going to be the first choice for food production anyway, even when their queue is empty.

Thu, 2016-09-01 21:51

#31

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Where are you getting the

Where are you getting the idea that Makers make better food than Cornucopia Machines? I can point to several sources in the books that indicate that the food Makers can make barely passes for food. You need better nanotechnology to make good food and Cornucopia Machines are supposed to be the among the best that transhumanity has got. I will even go so far as to suggest that maybe that CMs can even make better food than any food humanity has ever experienced. And if I am somehow wrong about that, I'm sure at some point the technology will advance to the point where it is true.

Thu, 2016-09-01 23:21

#32

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

DivineWrath wrote:Where are

DivineWrath wrote:
Where are you getting the idea that Makers make better food than Cornucopia Machines?

The fact that Makers exist was my first clue. There's already a limited version of a CM that can make crappy generic food: the Fabber.

DivineWrath wrote:
I can point to several sources in the books that indicate that the food Makers can make barely passes for food.

EP 4th ed, p.328 wrote:
[Makers] with a wider and better range of flavors and textures are more expensive, but produce food that is considered adequate or occasionally good. [Low to Moderate]

If you can find a source that states CMs make "occasionally good" (or better) food, that would change the story, but I honestly don't recall having come across one. Any mention of properly "good" food in EP, that I can recall at least, comes from transhuman chefs using grown ingredients.

DivineWrath wrote:
You need better nanotechnology to make good food and Cornucopia Machines are supposed to be the among the best that transhumanity has got.

It's not about advanced tech*. A caulking gun, a heat press and a tubular packing machine could turn out a decent burrito. It's about specialisation. Very few things besides food need to be held at a specific non-negligible humidity level during production. Very few things besides food need to be produced in gaseous mixtures containing herb smoke particulate. Very few things besides food need to be produced at varying pressures and temperatures through a fragile (or fluid) matrix. Nothing except food needs to (or indeed can) undergo the Maillard reaction. Sure, broiling elements, humidity controls, air-infusion systems and whatever else could be added to a CM, but once you have all that stuff, why do you need the CM's advanced nanotech? Poof, you're back down to a [Moderate] Maker. _____________________________________________ * Otherwise manual labour wouldn't still be winning out against nanotechnology in EP's kitchens.

Thu, 2016-09-01 23:37

#33

jKaiser

The question I see is: how

The question I see is: how well can any given nanofab machine, fabber, maker, whatever, differentiate the food from the container? Do these things have built-in pressure hoses for liquid products? Do you put in a pre-made container and the nanobots build the thing within it? For what it's worth, in my interpretation of the setting, where food is concerned to get anything other than lukewarm results -- literally, given the inevitable thermal emissions of nanofabrication -- you need a chef's touch. Basic makers make stuff that keeps you alive and healthy and might include flavor if you're lucky: basic pastes, meal bars, high-calorie protein/carbohydrate concentrates. Higher-end makers on the other end do their best work when producing top-quality ingredients that are then assembled either by a separate machine or by a cook, if for no other reason than that if you can afford such an expensive alternative to relatively cheap hydroponics and nanovat-grown meats, you might as well go whole-hog. ...not literally. Maybe. Depends on your income and boredom levels. There's some granularity there in that I imagine foods like pate or simple steaks don't require much in the way of transhuman touch, but when you can genetically engineer food, I have to believe that the envelope has been pushed pretty far in terms of haute cuisine. The dividing line is where in the cyberpunk/space opera spectrum you want this to be in. But I work in the food industry for my day job, and I can tell you that uniformity has its place next to variety, and makers excel only in the former. Presumably, blueprints for a particular ingredient vary just as much as the machines that print them, so on the cheaper end you have the standardized, universal Space*Mart-brand tomatoes while on the other hand you have a blueprint with a timed kill-trigger for a specific season's worth of heirloom tomatoes specifically cultivated the old fashioned way with cross pollination rather than genehacking, with a full band of variables accounted for so that no two tomatoes you print are the same in shape, color, or taste. And for a third option, plenty of makers probably accomplish that variability by accident. And in differing levels of tissue differentiation based on quality. There's a huge spectrum of social class here to be explored. End result, of course, is that just like today's food culture, there is going to be an endless jockeying for prestige and position at all levels of the industry while most of us in our splicers and such just judge each meal relative to the last few we had and a few memorable ones, regardless of source.

Fri, 2016-09-02 04:06

#34

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Well first, the books sells

Well first, the books sells nanotechnology as amazing stuff. If you wanted to add augments to your biomorph, you only need to take a dip in the goo of a healing vat for a few hours. It can also fully restore a biomorph from a severed head in a few days. If you wanted to switch morphs, you could use an ego bridge. A utilitool can form a variety of tool useful for many kinds of mechanical or medical work. Smart dust is an army of tiny cameras. Fractal digits allows a synthmorph to pick up individual cells and nanomachines. Repair spray can do wonders when it comes to repairing synthmorphs. A Protean nanoswarm is something that can make the same kinds of things that other nanofabbers can make. The books make it seem like nanotechnology can potentially do anything that transhumans know how to do. Yet you say than a Cornucopia Machine probably can't make a milkshake. Do you know what Cornucopia means? Do a quick net search and you will find it means or have words related to it: abundance, great amount of something, inexhaustible source, overflowing, nourishment, etc. Its a horn that is often displayed at thanksgiving, and not because of an accident. Its a fancy word that a PR department would think be a better name than "make anything machine". Second, why would a 20,000 cr nanofabber be unable to make the things that a 250 to 1000 cr nanofab could? I don't think the thing has to sacrifice any features when its that big and expensive. Especially considering that it can make those other machines easy. What do you expect me to do when I want a pizza or milkshake? Have my CM machine print a machine that can make what I want? Third, I think you have the capabilities of the devices known wrong. A CM is a general purpose machine that can make anything, and is priced expensive to reflect that fact. A fabber is a specialized nanofabricator that trades versatility for portability. Kinda like how a general hive can make any nanoswarm but is too big to be easily portable, yet a specialized hive is the size of a golf ball but can only make 1 kind of nanoswarm. The fabber also costs much less than a CM. The same relationship is true for general and specialized hives. However, makers are inexpensive food machines that might have little to no real nanotech abilities. The higher quality model, which is priced the same as a fabber, is probably a specialized fabber that specializes in food. Its probably called a maker for the sake of simplicity.

Dilf_Pickle wrote:
If you can find a source that states CMs make "occasionally good" (or better) food, that would change the story, but I honestly don't recall having come across one. Any mention of properly "good" food in EP, that I can recall at least, comes from transhuman chefs using grown ingredients.

Funny. You take the lack of any mention of the quality of food for CM to be reason to think that they are terrible at making food, yet I take that same lack of mentioning of food quality to be reason to think that there is no problem at all. Same words, opposite conclusions. I think you are wrong. If I were to go buy a car, I would expect it to have things like seats, steering wheel, engine, windows, etc. I would look at the salesman funny if they talked to me like I was someone who didn't expect cars to come with them. Really, a car is supposed to have many qualities to be a car. Not mentioning them doesn't mean they're absent, only not worth mentioning it. It also says it can make *any* small object and it lists a bowl of cereal as one such item. So CMs can clearly make food.

Dilf_Pickle wrote:
* Otherwise manual labour wouldn't still be winning out against nanotechnology in EP's kitchens.

Where does it say manual labour in kitchen are winning out against nanotechnology? I'm under the impression that the opposite is true. Real food is a luxury item. Most people can't afford it. Its harder to make than the simple food made by makers.

Fri, 2016-09-02 10:50

#35

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

The way I see things:

The way I see things: Cornucopia Machines: Unless making it insolves [b]hard[/b] rads, or [b]absolutely requires, in a cannot-be-skipped-no-matter-what[/b] sense, the kind of blast-furnace temperatures that inevitably destroy nanites, or intense EMF of the kind that scramble swarms, a CM makes it perfectly. A CM being able to spit out hot, fresh food is no different from it being able to make, say, a drop-forged steel hammer. That does not, however, mean that a CM is necessarily the optimal choice to make it. Tool fabbers exist to spit out drop-forged steel hammers faster, Makers exist to spit out food. When you're using a CM to create something, you're using the Nuclear Option: it [i]will[/i] geddit done, and done [i]perfectly[/i] (provided GIGO is not a problem,) but it's probably not the fastest or simplest way to make it. Regarding Makers, the low end of them dispense "food" that is basically biological fuel, the way you might dispense hydrogen to fuel a vehicle on Mars. Its quality and character will range from bland and unappetizing to outright disgusting. Most people will probably resort to various tricks to make this stuff quasi-tolerable; copious amounts of hot sauce come to mind, as does sensory skinning so that no matter what you're actually eating, it seems like you're eating something nice. The better Makers, however, produce food you'd actually want to eat: a thick shank of steak, a crisp Caesar salad, ripe, juicy orange slices, et cetera. They can do this far faster than a CM because they're taking specialized food-use inputs that are already long-chain proteins and whatever else goes into making it and assembling it into a proper foodstuff. Some of these makers might have specialized nanofabrication hoppers that can take the same kind of raw inputs a CM does and turn it into these foodstuff inputs, some of them will need to be loaded from purchased cartridges of the Right Stuff. Meanwhile, the CM can go from raw inputs to food. CHON - Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen - the building blocks of life. Shovel CHON into a maker, queue up a sirloin steak, and an hour later, tuck into a hot, thick, juicy sirloin, each strand of protein fabricated custom, just for you... But it's gonna take an hour.

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Fri, 2016-09-02 12:08

#36

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

Walls of text incoming...

Brace for impact. I'm just passionate about food (and beer), as you can probably tell. TL;DR: Makers are specialised for food production nanofabbed < vat-grown < traditionally grown meat can't be nanofabbed very well (viz. pods)

Fri, 2016-09-02 12:09

#37

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

To jKaiser

jKaiser wrote:
The question I see is: how well can any given nanofab machine, fabber, maker, whatever, differentiate the food from the container? Do these things have built-in pressure hoses for liquid products? Do you put in a pre-made container and the nanobots build the thing within it?

My take on it is that Makers have hoses and piping bags and blending attachments and molds and all the food-specific stuff ready to participate in the Making process, and probably a conveyor-belt system to collect, wash and re-use dishes instead of re-fabbing them every time. But the reality of it for a given headcanon is left open to interpretation, and rightly so IMO -- unless there's a nanofabbing book in the works.

jKaiser wrote:
For what it's worth, in my interpretation of the setting, where food is concerned to get anything other than lukewarm results -- literally, given the inevitable thermal emissions of nanofabrication -- you need a chef's touch.

Oh, that's canonical. From Transhuman's "Buying Lifestyle" section:

EP Transhuman, p.104 wrote:
HIGH (HIGH COST) [...] You can afford real food in addition to the vat-grown stuff. LUXURY (EXPENSIVE COST) [...] You eat real food cooked by transhumans.

jKaiser wrote:
Basic makers make stuff that keeps you alive and healthy and might include flavor if you're lucky: basic pastes, meal bars, high-calorie protein/carbohydrate concentrates. Higher-end makers on the other end do their best work when producing top-quality ingredients that are then assembled either by a separate machine or by a cook, if for no other reason than that if you can afford such an expensive alternative to relatively cheap hydroponics and nanovat-grown meats, you might as well go whole-hog.

If we follow the logic in the TH excerpt above, high-end makers might make some ingredients well, but would probably struggle with texture compared to some traditionally-grown foods. Especially those with fibrous structures like cruciferous vegetables and meats, or delicate matrices like pastry and caramelised crusts. Also, (nano)vat grown isn't the same as nanofabbed, as I understand it at least. 'Vat grown' would be the intermediate step between nanofabbed and traditionally-grown, in terms of quality.

jKaiser wrote:
There's some granularity there in that I imagine foods like pate or simple steaks don't require much in the way of transhuman touch, but when you can genetically engineer food, I have to believe that the envelope has been pushed pretty far in terms of haute cuisine.

As I allude above, I think a steak would be quite hard to nanofab well. After all, pods take months to grow, and they're just bone and muscle. But barring that example, you're probably right. It's even happening nowadays with the advent of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy]molecular gastronomy[/url].

jKaiser wrote:
Presumably, blueprints for a particular ingredient vary just as much as the machines that print them, so on the cheaper end you have the standardized, universal Space*Mart-brand tomatoes while on the other hand you have a blueprint with a timed kill-trigger for a specific season's worth of heirloom tomatoes specifically cultivated the old fashioned way with cross pollination rather than genehacking, with a full band of variables accounted for so that no two tomatoes you print are the same in shape, color, or taste.

Again going on the above, I'd suggest that such high-quality 'manufactured' ingredients would be the middle-ground between nanopaste and traditionally-grown ingredients. But the blueprint thing is interesting. Rarity and exclusivity of foods will most likely not only increase, but also shift, as was the case for patterned clothing after the industrial revolution, or personal electronics after the invention of the iPhone. Foods that are revered for their uniformity of texture, like sauces or crème brulée, would in all likelihood be better Made[sup]TM[/sup] than hand-made (if only slightly), and some foods that are conceptually simple but have subtle structures, like a nice crunchy apple or a chicken nugget, could only be properly experienced with grown ingredients.

Fri, 2016-09-02 12:25

#38

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

To DivineWrath

DivineWrath wrote:
Well first, the books sells nanotechnology as amazing stuff. [...]

Oh, I absolutely agree. But food chemistry is not only incredibly subtle and temperamental, but also orthogonal to the demands of virtually every other type of manufacturing undertaken by civilised society.

DivineWrath wrote:
Yet you say than a Cornucopia Machine probably can't make a milkshake.

I think you mixed up my metaphor. I said [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNPojGFg9-8]CNC machines[/url] can't make milkshakes, because I was using modern tech to illustrate that just because something is expensive, that doesn't mean it can outperform a smaller cheaper specialised device (milkshake blender) in its very field of specialty.

DivineWrath wrote:
Second, why would a 20,000 cr nanofabber be unable to make the things that a 250 to 1000 cr nanofab could? I don't think the thing has to sacrifice any features when its that big and expensive. Especially considering that it can make those other machines easy. What do you expect me to do when I want a pizza or milkshake? Have my CM machine print a machine that can make what I want?

See above, and above. 1) The Maker is specialised. It clearly makes food better than a Fabber, since that's the only reason it would even exist. 2) There is a more expensive (the [Moderate]) version of the Maker. It's going to make better food than the [Low] Maker, otherwise it wouldn't exist. And since a) nanotech isn't the limiting factor when nanofabbing good food (arguable, but I'll gladly argue it), and b) specialised food production equipment wouldn't be all that expensive, it's very unlikely in my mind that a CM could make better food than the high-end Maker.

DivineWrath wrote:
Dilf_Pickle wrote:
If you can find a source that states CMs make "occasionally good" (or better) food, that would change the story, but I honestly don't recall having come across one. Any mention of properly "good" food in EP, that I can recall at least, comes from transhuman chefs using grown ingredients.
Funny. You take the lack of any mention of the quality of food for CM to be reason to think that they are terrible at making food, yet I take that same lack of mentioning of food quality to be reason to think that there is no problem at all. Same words, opposite conclusions.

DivineWrath wrote:
I can point to several sources in the books that indicate that the food Makers can make barely passes for food.

My recollection is that the books tend talk about all nanofabbed food being mediocre, not specifically Makers. But I might be mistaken. Anyway, I don't think CMs are necessarily terrible at making food. I just think the higher-end Makers are probably better at it.

DivineWrath wrote:
I think you are wrong. If I were to go buy a car, I would expect it to have things like seats, steering wheel, engine, windows, etc. I would look at the salesman funny if they talked to me like I was someone who didn't expect cars to come with them. Really, a car is supposed to have many qualities to be a car. Not mentioning them doesn't mean they're absent, only not worth mentioning it.

Sure, that's an arguable point. But that only makes a CM "as good as" the best Makers, not better, since the difference in nanotech ability between the CM and the Maker isn't going to be the limiting factor in making quality food.

DivineWrath wrote:
It also says it can make *any* small object and it lists a bowl of cereal as one such item. So CMs can clearly make food.

I never said they don't.

DivineWrath wrote:
Dilf_Pickle wrote:
* Otherwise manual labour wouldn't still be winning out against nanotechnology in EP's kitchens.
Where does it say manual labour in kitchen are winning out against nanotechnology? I'm under the impression that the opposite is true. Real food is a luxury item. Most people can't afford it. Its harder to make than the simple food made by makers.

Poor wording on my part. I meant that manual labour is winning out "in the quality department" compared to nanotech.

Fri, 2016-09-02 12:38

#39

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

To ShadowDragon8685

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
The way I see things: Cornucopia Machines: Unless making it insolves [b]hard[/b] rads, or [b]absolutely requires, in a cannot-be-skipped-no-matter-what[/b] sense, the kind of blast-furnace temperatures that inevitably destroy nanites, or intense EMF of the kind that scramble swarms, a CM makes it perfectly. A CM being able to spit out hot, fresh food is no different from it being able to make, say, a drop-forged steel hammer. That does not, however, mean that a CM is necessarily the optimal choice to make it. Tool fabbers exist to spit out drop-forged steel hammers faster, Makers exist to spit out food. When you're using a CM to create something, you're using the Nuclear Option: it [i]will[/i] geddit done, and done [i]perfectly[/i] (provided GIGO is not a problem,) but it's probably not the fastest or simplest way to make it.

That is certainly another way to look at it. CMs attempting to perfectly recreate food would be manufacturing cookware, broilers, robotic arms and utensils for an hour before they finally got to the actual food. And then it would only work for foods that don't require ingredients that can't be properly nanofabbed, like meat. Probably makes a mean crème brulée, though.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
The better Makers, however, produce food you'd actually want to eat: a thick shank of steak, a crisp Caesar salad, ripe, juicy orange slices, et cetera. They can do this far faster than a CM because they're taking specialized food-use inputs that are already long-chain proteins and whatever else goes into making it and assembling it into a proper foodstuff. Some of these makers might have specialized nanofabrication hoppers that can take the same kind of raw inputs a CM does and turn it into these foodstuff inputs, some of them will need to be loaded from purchased cartridges of the Right Stuff.

This stretches my perception of what even the higher end Makers can do (viz. nanofabbing meat and other fibres), but there's an argument to be made for it, inasmuch as we're discussing a fictional world with various headcanons. It's also possible that the fancier Maker infrastructures include feedstocks that feature muscle fibres, collagen sheets and other grown ingredients. Although, to my mind, that starts to edge into transhuman chef territory.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Meanwhile, the CM can go from raw inputs to food. CHON - Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen - the building blocks of life. Shovel CHON into a maker, queue up a sirloin steak, and an hour later, tuck into a hot, thick, juicy sirloin, each strand of protein fabricated custom, just for you... But it's gonna take an hour.

I can follow that logic, with the exception that the energy and effort required to nanofab muscle fibres (if it's even possible in EP tech) would probably better be spent vat-growing a fat chunk of it for everyone to eat. The same reason pods are vat-grown.

Fri, 2016-09-02 14:23

#40

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Dilf_Pickle wrote:I think you

Dilf_Pickle wrote:
I think you mixed up my metaphor. I said CNC machines can't make milkshakes, because I was using modern tech to illustrate that just because something is expensive, that doesn't mean it can outperform a smaller cheaper specialised device (milkshake blender) in its very field of specialty.

I wasn't aware you were talking about something else. You how some people shorten Cornucopia Machines to CMs. I thought you were talking about some nanotech thing in EP that shortened to CNC, not some real life device that has nothing to with nanotech.

Quote:
1) The Maker is specialised. It clearly makes food better than a Fabber, since that's the only reason it would even exist.

No. The reason makers exists is because it is far cheaper and portable. At least that is what I think. A maker might not be bigger than a coffee maker or toaster while you will need truck to carry a Cornucopia Machine around. A basic Cornucopia Machine is 20,000 cr while a maker can be 250 to 1000 cr. A person who just earned their splicer morph after an indenture ship isn't going to be able afford a Cornucopia Machine but they could probably get a cheap maker. Another possible reason for it is because it can't make firearms, explosives, drugs, or anything else that can be dangerous. ---- I'll take a jab at meat talk. The difference between pod morph meat and nanofabed meat is one type needs to be alive at the end of the process while the other type is intended to be cooked. The end results are kinda opposite of each other. The cooked meat isn't required to be alive at any step in the process (though some methods might actually try to make the meat by growing it). I would also like to point out that healing vats can grow an entire living body for a severed head in a matter of days. So there isn't an absence of technology for rapidly growing living meat. However, we really don't know the economics of what it'll cost to grow a body that rapidly. Growing a new pod morph in pieces over many months or years is pobably the cheaper option.

Fri, 2016-09-02 16:37

#41

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I think the gradient works

I think the gradient works something like this Cornucopia Machine>>>Fabber>Maker generally. In terms of the methods they use it's possibly something like this: Makers are the simplest, working with complex mostly finished feedstock (basically food ingridients, likely dried). (Notably, they're the only nanofabricator which lacks a recycler) They use a number of macroscopic methods like extrusion and traditional mixing to make things. As such, they're limited to simpler mostly homogeneous foods. Stuff like heavily processed meats (pink slime a-likes), vegetable pastes, or various types of butters. You can probably make some decent stuff with them, but its a limited palette. You can make beer with this, but it'd basically be taking the parts of beer which aren't H2O or C2H60 as powder form and mixing them with the aforementioned ingredients. It's recognizably beer, but probably off, thanks basically being fancy alcoholic kool-aid. The nanotechnology involved is simple gradient based self organizing stuff like the kind of nano-tech we're making today. Fabbers are a step up, and primarily use complex gradient based stuff (similar to the kind of technology which makes cells function, and tells them how to differentiate) to produce a number of reactions in its area of expertise. It's basically a really, really fancy chemistry set box, capable of producing a number of well controlled environments to produce arbitrary reactions. It's limited to the set of reactions it specializes in (pharma, food, metal, etc). If you make beer with this thing, it's basically an extremely controlled and accelerated fermentation system, which likely does the reaction itself rather than needing yeasts for enzymes. For most people, this is going to basically be the same as normal beer. Only real aficionados, space-hipsters who want the real thing, and posers of real aficionados can really tell them apart. The nanotechnology involved is complex gradient based self organizing stuff, combined with simpler mechanosynthesis (like the kind you can find theoretical plans for) Cornucopia MachinesAre robust "make anything" machines which use all of the above technologies, and add in complex mechanosynthesis and free-swarm construction using swarms of nanomachines (a Prothean Swarm in a box). It's probably quite radiation tolerant, and can handle isotope sorting; allowing it to be a nuclear weapons program in a box. Short of doing Astatine chemistry or something silly like an explosion it can make anything. Time taken scales with how exo/endothermic the reaction is thanks to cooling/energy needs. It's basically a machine with a bunch of methods to clip atoms together in arbitrary configuration like a kid playing with legos. Prothean Swarms are similar to CMs, but are probably more technically complicated as they have to work in a less friendly environment. Food is trivial for a full CM, for example:

Dilf_Pickle wrote:
Very few things besides food need to be held at a specific non-negligible humidity level during production.

Humidity isn't all that important, internal water is made with the rest, and the local atmosphere could either be earth-alike, or similar pressure and nonreactive Helium or Nitrogen, with stuff like humidly locked in and held at pressure to prevent offgassing.

Dilf_Pickle wrote:
Very few things besides food need to be produced in gaseous mixtures containing herb smoke particulate. Very few things besides food need to be produced at varying pressures and temperatures through a fragile (or fluid) matrix. Nothing except food needs to (or indeed can) undergo the Maillard reaction.

You can just make the final product after all reactions complete from atoms themselves, making completed things intermediary steps. Cooking is basically really crude nanotechnology with requires complex feedstock, as you're using much more capable nanotech for a CM, you don't really need cruder methods as well. You might want them anyway, but the same final goal can be achieved. For beer, a CM just needs the right elements to assemble any arbitrary beer made from atoms as a final product. It's likely much more energy intensive than other methods though, which is a reason to use other methods. Prix Fixe (From After The Fall) has some information about EP food as well.

Prix Fixe pg 173 wrote:
There’s a towering mountain of platters and bowls, each brimming with a bubbling stew or soup, joints of vat-meat and gelid puddings. Bowls of rice shimmer with their own varicolored light, half-hidden vegetables glinting like jewels. Silvery prawns swim in waterfalls of violet liqueur that gush from floral-printed diamond goblets. A butt of edible photons circulates through all the dishes in intense rainbow hues.

(nice) Fabber food.

Prix Fixe pg 173 wrote:
She places the morsel on her tongue. It’s vat-meat, pORc, probably, fabbed into a hollowed lattice and filled with green paste. She’s dis - appointed at first, but as she chews, it bursts, filling her mouth with deeply herbal flavors.

Stuff to do with vat meat, and more fabber made stuff.

Prix Fixe pg 174 wrote:
A shrill aria swells in her implants as she swallows. The food is good, but her home fabber does just as well—and without the garish kinesthetic and auditory cues. It’s hard to really taste Batuk’s agneau des étoiles fous with her every nerve throbbing in stimulated pleasure.

Demonstration that the above is fabber-tier food. Also some new food experiences made possible with AR. It's worth noting that celebrity chef-dom can be achieved with fabber tier food, indicating that its quite good. (Though I think some of the celebrity was the full embracing of nano-food)

Prix Fixe pg 180 wrote:
A pungent aroma of frying garlic, nutmeg, and copper tingles Jule’s nose as horror freezes her to the deck. Oh fuck, no. The smiling morph’s torso blisters with internal heat and steam rises from its splitting skin. Tattoo licks his lips, winking at Jule as he stabs his meal with a knife. The cooking morph giggles as garlic cloves, roasted to perfection, spill out of its wound. Far from dying, the morph takes Tattoo’s hand and squeezes as the diner carves a pinkish steak from its thigh. ... The other morph shrieks in ecstasy as it mostly dissolves into a stew of vegetables and hunks of glistening meat. The woman with the drooping jaw slurps directly from the steaming broth. The soup- morph plucks a morsel from its own liquified body and eats it. The juices run red down its chin.

The kind of food CMs or Prothean nanoswarms are capable of. Dynamic reconstruction of arbitrary organic compounds (Exhuman style in this case) into previously impossible foods. Converting flesh into garlic is just the beginning.

Fri, 2016-09-02 19:01

#42

Dilf_Pickle Dilf_Pickle's picture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pkHmVGjpvc

DivineWrath wrote:
Dilf_Pickle wrote:
1) The Maker is specialised. It clearly makes food better than a Fabber, since that's the only reason it would even exist.
No. The reason makers exists is because it is far cheaper and portable. At least that is what I think. A maker might not be bigger than a coffee maker or toaster while you will need truck to carry a Cornucopia Machine around. A basic Cornucopia Machine is 20,000 cr while a maker can be 250 to 1000 cr. A person who just earned their splicer morph after an indenture ship isn't going to be able afford a Cornucopia Machine but they could probably get a cheap maker.

I'm trying not to sound snarky here, but it looks like you're totally neglecting the existence of Fabbers. Their canonical existence is central to what I'm trying to say.

DivineWrath wrote:
I'll take a jab at meat talk. The difference between pod morph meat and nanofabed meat is one type needs to be alive at the end of the process while the other type is intended to be cooked. The end results are kinda opposite of each other. The cooked meat isn't required to be alive at any step in the process (though some methods might actually try to make the meat by growing it).

I would propose that, given the level of transhuman tech in EP, growing living tissue is a hard pre-requisite for producing better-than-mediocre vat meat.

DivineWrath wrote:
I would also like to point out that healing vats can grow an entire living body for a severed head in a matter of days. So there isn't an absence of technology for rapidly growing living meat. However, we really don't know the economics of what it'll cost to grow a body that rapidly. Growing a new pod morph in pieces over many months or years is pobably the cheaper option.

I'm too lazy to look up growth rates, but your figures sound righter than the foggy memory of mine. That just makes my point all the more; vats are way, way better at making meat than nanofabricators of any stripe.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
I think the gradient works something like this Cornucopia Machine>>>Fabber>Maker generally. In terms of the methods they use it's possibly something like this: Makers are the simplest, working with complex mostly finished feedstock (basically food ingridients, likely dried). (Notably, they're the only nanofabricator which lacks a recycler) They use a number of macroscopic methods like extrusion and traditional mixing to make things. As such, they're limited to simpler mostly homogeneous foods. Stuff like heavily processed meats (pink slime a-likes), vegetable pastes, or various types of butters. You can probably make some decent stuff with them, but its a limited palette. You can make beer with this, but it'd basically be taking the parts of beer which aren't H2O or C2H60 as powder form and mixing them with the aforementioned ingredients. It's recognizably beer, but probably off, thanks basically being fancy alcoholic kool-aid. The nanotechnology involved is simple gradient based self organizing stuff like the kind of nano-tech we're making today.

I disagree with your gradient, but it's an arguable point. This could be another way to look at it.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Fabbers are a step up, and primarily use complex gradient based stuff (similar to the kind of technology which makes cells function, and tells them how to differentiate) to produce a number of reactions in its area of expertise. It's basically a really, really fancy chemistry set box, capable of producing a number of well controlled environments to produce arbitrary reactions. It's limited to the set of reactions it specializes in (pharma, food, metal, etc). If you make beer with this thing, it's basically an extremely controlled and accelerated fermentation system, which likely does the reaction itself rather than needing yeasts for enzymes. For most people, this is going to basically be the same as normal beer. Only real aficionados, space-hipsters who want the real thing, and posers of real aficionados can really tell them apart. The nanotechnology involved is complex gradient based self organizing stuff, combined with simpler mechanosynthesis (like the kind you can find theoretical plans for)

The above doesn't make any thematic sense. If Fabbers are more versatile than Makers and also make better food, why do high-end ([Moderate]) Makers even exist? And why are they the only device expressly described as capable of making "occasionally good" food when most nanofabbed food is mediocre?

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Cornucopia MachinesAre robust "make anything" machines which use all of the above technologies, and add in complex mechanosynthesis and free-swarm construction using swarms of nanomachines (a Prothean Swarm in a box). It's probably quite radiation tolerant, and can handle isotope sorting; allowing it to be a nuclear weapons program in a box. Short of doing Astatine chemistry or something silly like an explosion it can make anything. Time taken scales with how exo/endothermic the reaction is thanks to cooling/energy needs. It's basically a machine with a bunch of methods to clip atoms together in arbitrary configuration like a kid playing with legos. Prothean Swarms are similar to CMs, but are probably more technically complicated as they have to work in a less friendly environment.

But they can't make meat nearly as well as a vat, so clearly they fall short of molecular assembly for practical purposes.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Food is trivial for a full CM, for example:
Dilf_Pickle wrote:
Very few things besides food need to be held at a specific non-negligible humidity level during production.
Humidity isn't all that important, internal water is made with the rest, and the local atmosphere could either be earth-alike, or similar pressure and nonreactive Helium or Nitrogen, with stuff like humidly locked in and held at pressure to prevent offgassing.

Intracellular humidity is only one type. Interstitial and atmospheric humidity are also important for some types of food production. Either way, the CM has no advantage in this respect over a purpose-build Maker.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Dilf_Pickle wrote:
Very few things besides food need to be produced in gaseous mixtures containing herb smoke particulate. Very few things besides food need to be produced at varying pressures and temperatures through a fragile (or fluid) matrix. Nothing except food needs to (or indeed can) undergo the Maillard reaction.
You can just make the final product after all reactions complete from atoms themselves, making completed things intermediary steps. Cooking is basically really crude nanotechnology with requires complex feedstock, as you're using much more capable nanotech for a CM, you don't really need cruder methods as well. You might want them anyway, but the same final goal can be achieved.

We already have one example of a food (meat that is charred on the outside, browned underneath and nearly raw in the middle.) that is more complex than something still beyond a CM's ability (meat that is raw all the way through). So clearly you can't make such a final product in all cases.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
For beer, a CM just needs the right elements to assemble any arbitrary beer made from atoms as a final product. It's likely much more energy intensive than other methods though, which is a reason to use other methods.

You're right on the beer front -- being freed from the constraint of texture makes things much easier on the Fabber/CM/Maker.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
[Prix Fixe example] The kind of food CMs or Prothean nanoswarms are capable of. Dynamic reconstruction of arbitrary organic compounds (Exhuman style in this case) into previously impossible foods. Converting flesh into garlic is just the beginning.

I'm not familiar with Prix Fixe, but exhuman food is a whole other enchilada.

Fri, 2016-09-02 21:28

#43

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

I think we're getting nowhere

I think we're getting nowhere fast. The last bunch of posts is back and forth attempts to try to convince one person that they have the details of nanotechnology in EP wrong. Quite bluntly, I'm bored and rather worry about something else. See ya.

Sat, 2016-09-03 02:00

#44

jKaiser

Meanwhile, my Elite:

Meanwhile, my Elite: Dangerous playing ass is wondering about the Eclipse Phase equivalent to rare commodities, tightly-controlled particular luxury foodstuffs that specific habitats produce. I usually default to the Belt for things like this, and that means there is serious cred/rep to be earned in both making these things difficult to hack/produce a blueprint of and in deliberately doing exactly that. You could probably make an entire mini-campaign out of trying to source a specific vintage of brandy for a fab hacker intending to mass-produce it once the original run is consumed, or just as likely run characters trying to avoid that same thing happening. Of course, admittedly this all runs up against the inevitable fact that just like modern wine-tasting, the placebo effect is heavily in play here. Hell, plenty of wannabe connoisseurs probably turn their muses off when sampling simply to keep up airs.

Sat, 2016-09-03 12:34

#45

MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture

jKaiser wrote:

jKaiser wrote:
...You could probably make an entire mini-campaign out of trying to source a specific vintage of brandy for a fab hacker intending to mass-produce it once the original run is consumed, or just as likely run characters trying to avoid that same thing happening. ...

This is the kind of stuff inside Lunar Banks.

Sun, 2016-09-04 19:31

#46

MAD Crab

One thing I'd like to point

One thing I'd like to point out, that I'm not sure anybody has covered: Food is [i]really bloody complicated[/i]. A hammer is a hammer. It's a simple enough arrangement of atoms, in a fairly simple geometric shape. Food, real food, is trillions of cells, full of tasty tasty organic molecules, maybe some lysed and breaking down as you eat them, it's lots of parts at different temperatures, and even simple things take hours in the CM so good luck there. Heat is a quantity of change, you don't get to give one part of the meal some energy and then expect it to stay the same temperature. Food is partially denatured, cross linked proteins. It's a million little factors. So a hammer blueprint might be trivial, but a hotdog blueprint might just be ridiculously complicated and take a week to fab in a CM.

—

Sun, 2016-09-04 19:55

#47

jKaiser

That's more or less why I

That's more or less why I assume that any food printing does so in discrete ingredients rather than printing a whole hamburger at once. For one, we know that cooking the old fashioned way is still very much a thing (and difficult in microgravity); for another, it just seems more efficient. Fast-growing ingredients, like most vegetables, are probably just overall easier and more economical to grow via hydroponics than ever bother printing, even if the machine can.

Mon, 2016-09-05 03:21

#48

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

I feel the need to point out

I feel the need to point out that you can nanofabricate an [b]entire[/b] transhuman body, complete with augments, minus the brain. As long as you have a preexisting healthy (or at least still-alive) brain, you can put it in the tank, and rebuild the entire body around it. If you can do [i]that,[/i] you can goddamn well nanofabricate a hot, juicy steak from CHON.

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Mon, 2016-09-05 09:37

#49

MAD Crab

Different process, different

Different process, different equipment. You use a vat for that, which as far as I know force-grows the cells, not nanofabs them. So I suppose you'd be better off decanting your milkshake from a healing vat than a general-purpose CM.

—

Mon, 2016-09-05 11:14

#50

jKaiser

It also takes three years to

It also takes three years to make a grown biomorph, if I recall accurately. That's a bit longer than I'm willing to wait for dinner. ...That came out wrong. Oh well, off to Extropia for some human-on-a-stick.

Mon, 2016-09-05 13:49

#51

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Fixe Prix already has

Fixe Prix already has descriptions of what nanotech can pull off for foodstuffs. It's quite impressive. Remember, exhumanism is an ideology, not a tech base.

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