Budweiser reveals plan to brew beer for Mars

The Space Race: Will people or beer be first to land on Mars?

Picture: (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Although we haven’t actually set foot on Mars yet, one beer company has us covered when we do.

In March, the brewing company Anheuser-Busch announced their lofty goal to create a beer in space that would eventually be accessible on Mars, in a campaign that sounded more like it belonged in a sci-fi novel.

While the goal seemed a bit far-off, literally, it looks like space beer will be happening a lot sooner than everyone thought.

Working with the International Space Station, Anheuser-Busch is going to create a “microgravity brew” - and it is happening in December.

Clearly eager to get beer in space, Anheuser-Busch has partnered with “CASIS, who manages the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, and Space Tango, a payload development company that operates two commercial research facilities within the National Lab.”

As of now, the plan is for SpaceX to transport the goods, 20 barley seeds and other key Budweiser ingredients, to the International Space Station on December 4 during its CRS-13 mission.

Once the barley seeds arrive safely at their temporary extraterrestrial home, they will be put to work.

While floating around in space, two experiments will be conducted with the seeds. The first, to test seed exposure, will consist of letting the barley seeds live on the space station for 30 days to see how they react to their new outer space environment. The second experiment, seed germination, includes watering and feeding the seeds for two weeks to see if they grow as they would on Earth.

The plan is for the barley to stay in orbit for a month before coming down to be analysed, and hopefully, made into space beer.

And before anyone criticizes the necessity of beer in space, retired astronaut Clayton Anderson made an important point. Speaking on its potential importance on an astronaut's psyche, Anderson defended the microgravity brew by stating, “ A successful mission will include many key components, including the need to provide crew members with commodities that remind them of home.”

Cheers to that.