Question

Captain Sarfo is examining the trip manifest for round trip for his personnel carrier, and is trying to plan how much food to bring. His typical run goes from Ganymede station to Mars. As such, he flies Martians almost exclusively, and  plans his trips by approximating food consumption using passenger height. Since transporting excess weight increases fuel costs significantly, Captain Sarfo relies heavily on the accuracy of this prediction (going over or under is very undesirable).

Today, there is a conference on Mars, and Captain Sarfo’s first officer warns him that ¼ of his passengers will be Belters for this trip, and 1/5 will be Earthers. Earthers eat more than Martians, and Belters eat much less.

a)         If Belters and Earthers are approximately the same height as Martians, how will this complicate Captain Sarfo’s estimates? Please be specific.

b)         Using his old estimates, Captain Sarfo knows that a Martian standing 1.7 meters eats 1.4 kilos of food in a day, and that amount increases linearly with height. If we assume that Belters’ and Earthers’ consumption ALSO increases linearly, then what pieces of information would we need to improve Captain Sarfo’s estimates over his original method?

Answer 1