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"Science and science fiction, how do you even distinguish the two?"
- Jerry Pournelle

Boosterspice  
  A substance that extends human life almost indefinitely.  

There’s some boosterspice seeds in our consignment for the Zoo Of Earth; if we could grow boosterspice aboard ship we could keep ourselves young. The air plant will work as long as there’s sunlight or starlight. But the food converter — well, it can’t make elements. Eventually they’ll get lost somewhere in the circuit, and we’ll start getting deficiency diseases, and — hmmm. I could probably keep us all alive for a century and a half.
Technovelgy from One Face, by Larry Niven.
Published by Galaxy in 1965
Additional resources -

This excerpt from Ringworld Engineers (1980):

"Why so anxious, root-eater? You left me in an autodoc for over an hour. I lack coordination and I am hungry, nothing worse."

"Good. We were able to test the substance only so far. Very well, Chmeee, you have your payment. Boosterspice is the medicine that has kept Louis Wu young and strong for two hundred and twenty-three years. My people have developed an analogue for kzinti. You may take the formula home to the Kzinti Patriarchy when our mission is complete."

Chmeee seemed nonplussed. "I will grow young? This muck is in me already?"

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from One Face
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven
  Tech news articles related to One Face
  Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven

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