Now, I know that most peoples' lore doesn't concern spaceflight, but... a) why the heck not? I think spaceflight being cool is like, one of the 2.1 things you can get the Arcanist and the Stormcatcher to agree on, and b) no one ever said they DON'T have rockets yet... So I've decided to brainstorm ways of feeding dragons on long spaceflight missions.
It's worth noting that this post is going to concern sustainable ways of feeding dragons for the purpose of deep-space missions. In other words, yeah, they can have ration bars/jerkey/dehydrated meals and stuff, and while in orbit around Sonrieth you can definitely have restocking missions launched up to the Interflight Space Station or whatever, but let's assume they're on a multiple-year mission to one of the other planets in their solar system for the time being.
Plants
Plants are pretty simple: veg gardens! Like the actual ISS has right now. This would also be an opportunity to study the effect of Nature magic on dragons/plants while they're hundreds/thousands/millions(? depends how depe in space) of km away from Sonrieth. For deep-space missions, this would also help regulate the onboard atmosphere. Medicinal plants could also be grown, and biochemist dragons could probably turn them into functional medicine (or maybe not even that; aloe seems like a REALLY handy thing to have on hand if someone gets burnt, considering how easy it is to get the medicinal part out of the aloe. This even benifits dragons who have aloe allergies, because until the aloe dies, dragons without aloe allergies won't be using aloe-free burn resources onboard the spacecraft.)
Bugs
Bugs are kind of where it gets interesting as far as I'm concerned, because theoretically, insects, especially pollinators, would actually benefit an onboard farm biome. This would require the veg garden to be its own module. It would have to have some sort of double door, similar to a butterfly garden, in order to prevent bugs from entering the rest of a spacecraft. It wouldn't have to be as secure as, say, an airlock, but come on, do you really want dune vampires biting at your arms while you're trying to maneuver your spacecraft in orbit around an alien planet?
I think to have a sustainable supply of bugs within the veg garden module, you'd have to have at least a few specific "homes" for them, so to speak. (It's worth noting that I'm not an entomologist; if it isn't obvious yet, I'm looking to go into space sciences of some sort, with an ideal goal being working with satellites.) These... hives? General bug housing stations would allow the bugs to reproduce and gather food as they would on Sonrieth, albeit in weightlessness. This would allow pollinators to pollinate the veg garden, but also having enough bugs for bug-eating dragons to have fresh meals now and then.
which means... how much effort do you want to put into to have a sustainable veg garden? you could have aphids so you could have ladybugs, which might be a little more protein-filled than other bugs since they eat other bugs, but... if the ladybugs die, then you have aphids infesting your veg garden.
Meat/Seafood
Well, ofc meat & seafood can be prepackaged and rehydrated onboard, but what do you do if you don't want to do that? I feel like in near-future Sonrieth it might flat out make more sense to like... Have a little lab that you can grow meat in. Like, okay, in my lore, one of my dragons is a stem cell scientist who uses spare eggs to grow replacement organs for other dragons. I haven't written said lore yet, but yeah, no, her work is basically like, "what do we do if someone needs a kidney transplant and they're on Sonrieth Mars." And we've grown human organs on mice, despite such having obvious ethical issues within both the scholarly community and (naturally) the general public. So I think it's not unreasonable to say that dragons could grow meat/seafood from extra eggs.
Where to extra eggs come from? Well, I mean, depends whether or not you have fertilized eggs lying around, which... Implies that dragons are getting up to some... interesting bullshit in interplanetary missions. Bullshit which, if you're a NASA astronaut, is straight up illegal. But hey, Sonrieth, right?
Seafood in particular presents an interesting challenge, because naturally-growing seafood would be flat out a pain in the dick, because water is HEAVY. And amphibious creatures on Sonrieth are sometimes classified as meat anyways, so it might be too much of a pain in the dick. Sorry, ridgebacks, eat your fucking ration bar and move on.
I guess it would make sense, though, if you're establishing a long-term colony, to have habitats to grow seafood and livestock in, but... it seems like overkill.
Idk, it's late, and frankly, I need to read more about sustainable food in irl space missions before I continue with this. What are yalls' thoughts?
