I wrote this up a while back.
The original TV dinners, with meat, vegetable, mashed potato, and fruit or dessert, was about 12 inches by 10 inches by 1 inch tall. If you throw in a 2 inch by 12 inch by 1 inch detachable utility pack with eating utensils, condiments, and beverage powders (or even liquid concentrates), it makes a 12 inch by 12 inch by 1 inch complete meal.
For 1 person for 32 days at 3 meals a day, a stack of TV dinners with varied breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals would only be 96 inches tall (8 feet). If you want to make it square, it's about a 2 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot pack. Easily manageable.
A Scout/Courier with double occupancy (8 people) could stack them in each stateroom (under each bunk), assuming they are shelf stable and just need to be heated. Otherwise a special place has to be made in the Galley or Cargo Hold.
The original price of a TV Dinner was $0.98, adjusted to 1Cr, so only about 96Cr per person for 32 days (or 768Cr for an 8 person crew).
I'm sure by the 57th century, there would be shelf-stable standardized food modules about the size of a TV dinner, made just for Starships or Travellers. A 12 inch wide by 1 inch tall by 10 inch deep food module heater would probably be standard in any Starship Galley.
A High Passage meal would probably be bigger and a lot different. But just think about how good a Tech Level-15 TV Dinner™ would taste! And TV could also stand for TraVeller.
So:
Food Module Pack
1 person, 32 days (96 meals)
2' x 2' x 2'
96Cr
Food Module Pallet
8 person, 32 days (768 meals)
4' x 4' x 4'
768Cr
Great write up! The ship already has to carry potable water, or crack it out of asteroids. So stealing this for my game!
ReplyDeleteHow much would they weigh?
ReplyDeleteLooking at the original references a TV Dinner weighed about 12 ounces or 340 grams. About 1 ounce (30g) of this was packaging.
ReplyDeleteLet’s be conservative and say adding a dehydrated drink and utensils kit adds another 1.5 ounces (45g)
If the only thing dehydrated is the drink, the packs weigh 13.5 ounces or 385 grams.
One month of those is 1,303 ounces or about 82 pounds or about 37 kilograms.
If everything is dehydrated then the weight would be 6 ounces (170g) including packaging. 96 meals is 575 ounces or 36 pounds (16kg)
This presumes packaging and utensils remain about the same weight as today. If you want to adjust that for higher tech levels probably take 10% off. Their mass to the original food mass is a small fraction of the total. Dehydration is a much bigger factor in final mass.
The amount of H2O needed for a full dehydrated meal is about 19 fl oz or 570ml.