From Space Plants to Space Beer! WOOHOO!

There's a saying among marine biologists I know: "Never study anything you can't eat." It's a good rule of thumb, and one that leads to lobster and mussel dinners at New England marine labs after test subjects have mysterious accidents involving boiling water and drawn butter. It's also clearly a rule obeyed by at least some of the scientists engaged in figuring out how best to conduct space-based agriculture (astroculture?). If we're going to explore the stars, after all, we're going to need a renewable food supply to cross vast interstellar distances. Establishing whether crops can survive in space is crucial. In 2006, Japanese scientists from Okayama University teamed up with Sapporo Breweries to conduct several experiements on barley, the raw material for many beers. This was not a study entirely focused on working out how to make a Cold One in outer space: Barley handles stress from lack of ...