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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Incorrect.

Morale is a huge issue on boomers and subs, which patrol for months at a stretch, generally submerged the entire time (the whole idea being for your adversary to not know where you are). Crap food on top of the isolation and lack of outdoor exposure fares poorly (so to speak).

Fresh produce is limited to the first week or so of cruise AFAIU, but preserved/frozen and dry goods are available for the duration. I don't know if there's any fresh-grow possible, though there've been experiments.

(General information, no direct experience.)

Some sources:

"Everything you wanted to know about food on a US submarine" https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a147643...

"Sub Grub Is Navy’s Five-Star Secret" (2003) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-18-fi-subma...

"US navy researchers conduct tests to grow vegetables on submarines" (2016) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/06/vegetable-ga...

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Microgreens seem like they'd be great for submarines: cheap power and water are all thats needed to 'unzip' compact seeds into nutritional food. As a happy byproduct, photosynthesis would scrub a little bit of CO2.

Sprouts and the like occurred to me, and have been used by some sailors / rowers on long voyages.

For submarine crew, the balance between "eating home food" vs. "nutritional sufficiency" may swing the balance, though I'd argue that something (sprouts) is better than nothing (frozen / canned vegetables).

Crops which could be grown in conditions in which power is abundant (nukes!) as is water, and atmosphere could be controlled (high CO2 via redirected scrubbers), but space is highly constrained, becomes an interesting question. Probably not trellis or tree crops, though lettuce/greens, carrots, possibly cruciferous vegetables and onions, possibly.

How much use of fermented vegetables is made would be another interesting question.

From the latimes article: "“We had three things going for us: The quality of food and the amount that was served. The music on board. And the reading materials."

I can't tell if "reading materials" is a euphemism for pornography or not but I'm guessing probably.

That's an interesting article though, I never thought about it before.

Subs also get food delivered from other ships.

USN subs? Subs generally never want to reveal their position, and only surface when absolutely necessary.

I'm not a submariner so I have no idea how regularly at-sea resupply happens, but the USN does maintain a small submarine tender fleet - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_S._Land-class_submarine_...

Yes, and they're ancient; commissioned closer to WW2 than to today. They're basic use is to head to a port, and provide services to submarines in the area. I don't believe they have any capability to provide re-supply at sea, especially munitions like torpedoes and missiles which are large, heavy, and difficult to transfer in anything less than a perfectly smooth sea state.

Citation requested.

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