On Jul 15, 6:03*pm, (Steve Pope) wrote:
> Andy *<q> wrote:
> >Steve Pope said...
> >> All this implies is that the vertical spacing from floor to
> >> floor must be large compared to the width of the floor.
> >>>Artificial sunlight would be the only feasible way to do a city block 10
> >>>acre/10 story building. No other way to do it.
> >> I completely disagree. *Why would you need to build a tall building
> >> (as opposed to a flat one) if you're simply piping in
> >> electricity for lighting? *The whole purpouse of a vertical
> >> arangement is to intersect a large segment of sunlight
> >> for a given footprint, thus justifying the construction cost
> >> of a tall structure.
> >OK, let's take the Pentagon, for example. It sits on 34 acrews but has
> >149.219467 acres of floor space.
>
> >Would you rather pay electricity and water and construction costs for
> >building 150 acres of vertical farm or just use 150 acres of God's green
> >earth. Which is the greener solution?
>
> The premise of vertical farming is that you can site the
> things in the middle of a densely populated area, thus
> saving transport cost/energy in taking the product to market
> relative to conventional farming. *Whether these costs
> offset the cost of building/maintaining the vertial structure
> are to me unclear, but that's the premise.

You also need to include the assumptions of higher yields due to
better weather and moisture control and, the some dubious assumption
of fewer preditors and diseases.

One could also probably postulate 3-4 harvests per year for many
items.


According to a reference in one of the papers at the website NASA had
been funding closed ecology research that may be adaptable.

John Kane Kingston ON Canada