A team of students from the Univerisity of California, San Diego is designing an experiment to test if beer can be brewed on the moon. Adding new meaning to low-gravity beer! They are competing against 24 other teams to get their experiment a spot on a private robotic moon lander. It looks like the scientific justification for their experiment is to test the resilience of yeast to extreme conditions. I thought this story was fun, but I have a hunch that one of the other teams will come up with something more scientifically useful than moon beer. Although, if grabbing some media attention is a factor in the selection maybe moon beer has a chance. Here's a link to the full Gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/can-you-brew-beer-on-the-moon-1791438703 I wonder how the experiment will control temperature to allow fermentation, which can vary on the moon's surface from -298 to 224 degrees Fahrenheit (-183 to 106 degrees Celsius). The article doesn't say. The article also points out that their plan to allow the yeast to "settle out" might not work well when gravity is ~16% of the Earth's, but on the other hand, hazy beer is popular these days... There shouldn't be any concern about oxidation at least.
When I read the thread title, I assumed this was going to be about the next Brewdog Kickstarter project.
It's gotta be better than brewing on Uranus.... Sorry. Someone was bound to say it. But seriously........It would be really cold, so lager makes sense.... Ya, I've got nothing else. Just came here to bring up the second to last planet....
Interesting experiment. I'm glad research dollars are being spent to solve an issue that has plagued mankind since the dawn of time.
@Ranbot There's a lot going on the background that doesn't get reported in the article. I think there will indeed be other scientific and practical implications, especially given the very long and important influences yeast has had on human culture, and the shared heritage of genes that exist in both humans and yeasts.
Yes, there's probably more to this... the intent of this research would likely be to test if yeast can survive space travel, which could have implications for finding life outside of Earth and have applications to potential technologies using specialized yeasts to support human space exploration (e.g. life-support systems to make food, process wastes, create fuels in-flight, etc.). On a more practical level, the beer-brewing experiment capsule looks relatively small, so if it allows room for other experiments on the same launch that could make it more valuable to the overall mission. There is also an intangible value of free publicity from the media who will surely take more interest (positive and negative) in brewing beer on the moon than other esoteric space projects.
