CT Economics of Moisture Farming

The tower looking things you see scattered around the Lars farm are the moisture evaporators. They extract water out of the air and hold it for consumption or irrigation of crops for food. The Lars' essentially farm water out of the air and then drink, irrigate their water gardens(they aint growing any crops in that soil), or sell surplus amounts.

edit: I wonder if a Sandcrawler load of Bantha poodo would fertilize the soil enough to grow a stalk of corn?

 

Tatooine is in the Outer Regions of the Galaxy the Lars has nobody to sell to besides unscrupulous Jawas and is frequently harassed by the Tusken raiders. Much of what they do profit from go towards security. Not like moisture farming is the only local source of income the Lars have not got involved the Mos Eisley trade which is a magnet for commerce.

 

Do the Hutts even both to shake down the moister farmers? I could see them leaving each other alone. Distance is one factor. These places could be hundreds or thousands of miles a part. If the farmers can hold their own against Sandpeople, they'd probably put up a fight against Jabba's thugs too. That cuts into profit. Also Jabba never bothered to clear out the Sandpeople, which is another indication he doesn't pay much attention to life on Tatoonie outside of his organization. The returns might not be worth the effort. And it's not like the people are uniting to over throw the Hutts.

And does the farm just harvest water or do they grow crops underground hydroponically with artificial lighting?

 

We’re told in one of the comics that Jabba shook down the moisture farmers.

As for crops, we’re not told exactly, but if there is one thing Tatooine doesn’t need, its artificial lighting.

 

The link eko32eko7 posted has a LOT of info about moisture vaporators and how moisture farmers make a living.


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There might be too much light on Tatooine. I was thinking to conserve and trap water, the crops would be grown underground in caves, hence the artificial light. And we don't see greenhouses. And caves are probably easier to defend.

 

Artificial lighting might indeed be a necessity, but what catches my eye in terms of lighting conditions is the binary stars. The binary's revolution cycle could just as well create seasons as it could create far too frequent irregularities. Do we even know how long a revolution of the binary takes?

 

You just put up some shades if the suns are producing too much light.

 

Shades block out the sun, but they don't lock in the moister. They need a closed system where the water is recycled. Underground does a better job of that. It also protects the crops from sandstorms, which are plentiful and marauders. The good news is solar power should be in plentiful and dependable.

 

Could water not be as common in certain regions or planets due to some type of environmental condition.

Or, might water require some type of filtration system before it can be used due to large scale contamination?

There must be more to it than simply collecting water or water vapor from a breathable atmosphere

 

Solar power. Like letting the sunlight shine on the crops. That is not mutually exclusive with a closed system.

Why? Its a pain in the ass to have to extract your water from the atmosphere, but in a desert, its perfectly plausible. There are various low-tech ways this is done on Earth, and we have oceans next to a lot of our deserts.

 

I think you're first idea is right. Environmental conditions on Tatooine are so dry that simply collecting water vapor from the breathable atmosphere is a full time and arduous job.

There are people on Earth who eke out an existence living in places with so little precipitation years can pass without visible rainfall. Antarctica has an area where it might not have rained or snowed in 14 millions years......... FOURTEEN MILLION..... 14,000,000 years and no rain. While I'd imagine it gets very cold the atmosphere would still be breathable.

https://www.livescience.com/40890-antarctic-dry-valleys-no-water.html

While Mars doesn't have a breathable atmphoere, it does have an atmosphere. There is no rain.

There have been and are conflicts on Earth fought over water. There are western stories with cowboys or settlers centered on the importance of water rights and people killing each other over claims to wells or springs in the desert.

 

Moisture Vaporators must work very well, as they not only use them in desert worlds, but lush, green, damp environments as well, like the planet in the beginning of Rogue One. They must have pipes running to a reservoir that can collect water more efficiently than just digging a well.

 

Good point. I mean, its obvious, out of universe, that the Erso family has moisure vaporators simply because thats what Star Wars farmers have. On the other hand, we have to think of some reason, in-universe, that makes sense.

http://lightgungalaxy.com/2017/04/06/why-does-galen-erso-have-a-moisture-farm-in-rogue-one/

Basically, it seems to boil down to using them for filtration purposes. I don’t buy it, but its an answer. I was going to guess that they’re more efficient/cheaper than desalinating (the farm is by the ocean, after all), which isn’t too far off.

 

On Earth about 96.5 % of water is in the oxeans, 3.5% in freashwater lakes and rivers and only 00.1 % is in the atmosphere.
For a planet like Tatoone that appears to have zero surface water, it seems likely that even less water would be in the air.
Add in any local planetary conditions that might cause the water to be filtered in any way and it looks like the vaporizers would need to be very efficient infeed to provide adequate water for household and commercial use.

 

Well on the topic of Moisture Farming I thought this article I read today might also interest some of you.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-09/water-harvesting-from-desert-air/9836908

 

Going from memory, the SW novelization said G1 and G2. A G1 is slightly bigger than a G2 like our sun, so someone can just simplify by assuming that both Tatooine's suns are G2. In SW77 during the binary sunset scene, Luke is beholding a binary pair of apparent separation "X". During the ROTJ Jabba dusk establishing shot, the viewer is beholding a binary pair of separation "Y". Separations X and Y and the sellar diameter of the smaller specimen can each and all be measured from the screen captures. The larger separation in ROTJ is a minimum upper value (the two stars can at least get this far apart). The smaller separation in SW77 is a maximum lower value (the two stars can get at least this close together). So an average of these gives a minimum available (presented) semi major axis.

The masses (2 units of a G2 star) and the semimajor axis (average of X and Y) can be plugged into Kepler's Third Law and a period can be solved for. The rough figure I get from the measured values is 49 hours. Per the thread, this is a rapid oscillation on seasonal time scales, so any of its effects should be smoothed out over seasonal time scales.

Seasonal time scales will of course depend on Tatooine's own eccentricity and its own inclination. The movies and canon seem to present that Tatooine is habitable by humanoids or bipeds at most latitudes. With two G2s at the barycenter, if Tatooine was to be populated at more places than the immediate north and south poles, it would have to be somewhat farther from its two stars than Earth is from our own sun. A Tatooine orbiting two G2's that had an average temperature of Earth would be just shy of Mars orbit. In that hypothetical case the stars that Luke beholds would be about 2/3 the angular diameter that we perceive.

 

An intriguing subject, no doubt yet I never mustered the energy to really explore it.

Hypothesis 1: Given the hard to overlook parallels between Arrakis from Frank Herbert's Dune and George Lucas' Tatooine I find it rather difficult not to assume that "Spice" is one of Tatooine's export goods. Solo is there after he lost a shipment of Spice to an Imperial Cruiser, Jabba has a permanent residence there according to ROJ and although we don't have sandworms Dune style there is the Great Pit of Carcoon. There are probably Tatooine locations like the "Spice mines of Kessel" but I wouldn't exclude the possibility that Spice can be found in lesser quantities elsewhere.

Hypothesis 2: Owen Lars isn't just harvesting water from the atmosphere but water enriched with Spice that can be further processed to extract Spice or has a market value of its own (i.e. "Tatooine Water").

Hypothesis 3: The moisture evaparators don't just extract water enriched with Spice from the atmosphere. If we look at the contraption


I for one can't help but wonder what prevents the vaporator tower not to fall over in one of Tatooine's sandstorms, i.e. it has to have a base that goes further underground. That opens the question if we are perhaps looking at some kind of water well "pumpjack", i.e. a surface device that brings water from deep underground to the surface for harvesting.

 

The surface area of the collectors seem really small for such a harsh environment. I wonder if this was a sensor unit as opposed to the collection mechanism.