The tree · Biology · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 5 to 20 years
A crew off Earth lives for a year with most of its food produced on site and its water and air recycled
The space station recycles most of its water and makes its oxygen from that water, but every calorie is shipped up. Ground experiments (a year-long sealed habitat in China) have closed the food loop on Earth. Doing it off Earth for a year is what partial self-sufficiency, the Tier 2 criterion, means in practice.
The test: what counts as it having happened
A crew at a site off Earth completes twelve continuous months during which more than half of their calories are produced on site from raw inputs, and more than ninety-five percent of water and oxygen are recycled. Raw inputs are water, air, carbon dioxide, minerals, waste streams and other materials that are not themselves food, so calories grown as crops or made by cultured or fermented processes from such inputs count, and calories made from shipped food or food ingredients do not. The figures are as reported in the operating agency's or company's published accounting, which states the calorie, water, and oxygen figures separately and includes starting stocks, resupply, and emergency inputs.
Settled by: The operator's published life-support accounting
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35% | 45% | 60% | 85% | 92% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 19th, 2026.
Why these numbers: Done on the ground for a year at 98 percent closure; off Earth, shipping food is cheap and farming is a settlement-scale project that needs volume and a reason, so a third by 2071 even given a staple crop harvested there; the long windows are where a settlement has to grow its own.
What this one is worth
If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.6% (+0.1 points). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.0% (−0.5 points).
| Longevity scenario | baseline2071 ± 8 | moderate2080 | strong2095 | radical2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The headline as it stands | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled yes now | 0.6% | 1.6% | 4.6% | 12% | 16% |
| If this settled no now | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the
ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a
reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run
2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and
playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per
scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about
0.10 points is inside the noise rather than
a finding.
What the ledger says about this step
- Nine steps were added to the tree, seven of them new requirements on the chain, which is most of why the headline fell in this run 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed
- A year off Earth on mostly home-grown food, water and air came down: shipping food is cheap and farming is a settlement-scale project 2026-09-20 Changed my mind
The last 3 checks
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
-
2026-11-01 Nothing new
No off-Earth crew year with more than half of calories produced on site. The ISS still relies on Earth food and the ground analogs and MELiSSA results found do not count as off-Earth.
-
2026-10-04 Nothing new
No off-Earth crew has done twelve months with over half of calories grown on site. Ground analogues like Lunar Palace and Tiangong recycling claims (about 95 percent water, 100 percent oxygen regeneration) do not meet the criterion.
-
2026-09-19 Nothing new
No off-Earth crew reported a twelve-month period meeting the calorie and recycling thresholds in the window; China's Yuegong-1 closed-loop results are ground-based simulations from 2017 and 2018, not off Earth.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-19 | resolution | percentages as reported by the operator, with no requirement to separate the figures or count starting stocks | the operator's published accounting must state the calorie, water and oxygen figures separately and include starting stocks, resupply and emergency inputs | Step 27 outside-model review, item 40 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): percentages can hide imported stocks and accounting conventions; an independent audit was dropped as something that does not exist. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-19 | depends_on | none | B-staple-crop-grown-from-seed-to-harvest-off-earth | Step 27 outside-model review, item 3 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): calories have never been grown off Earth, and a staple crop from seed to harvest is a cheap leaf this node needs. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-19 | probability | 0.50 / 0.58 / 0.70 / 0.85 / 0.90 | 0.35 / 0.45 / 0.60 / 0.85 / 0.92 | Step 27 outside-model review, item 7 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): shipping food is cheap and farming is a settlement-scale project; moved partway toward the reviewer. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-25 | resolution | 'more than half of their calories are grown on site' | 'more than half of their calories are produced on site from raw inputs', raw inputs defined as materials that are not themselves food | Candidate 9 of docs/proposal-function-over-route-2026-09-25.md, I approved September 25th, 2026 with the lighter handling: what the year of life support needs is most of its food made on site, and cultured or fermented food made from raw inputs would serve as well as crops. The staple crop stays this node's parent, unchanged, as the likeliest route; a cultured-food route would be added as a second parent, under an either-route step, if one appears. Numbers unchanged: with only the crop route drawn, the widening matters once a second route exists. |
| 2026-09-25 | name | A crew off Earth lives for a year with most of its food, water, and air recycled on site | A crew off Earth lives for a year with most of its food produced on site and its water and air recycled | Candidate 9, as above: the name follows the widened criterion. |
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The record itself is data/B-biology.toml in the public repository.