Growing and curing tobacco and fermenting beer in space.

[dryson]

Here is an idea, why not use the various ISS station modules in re-engineered fashion to be used as space sided distilleries and tobacco barns. Once these products have been grown and fermented they could then be transported back to earth and sold on the market as a space grown commodity where the revenues made from their sale would then be put back into the building of more tobacco and beer style nodes that would then be attached to the other modules in the same manner as the ISS is connected and operates?

I don't smoke or drink anymore but I would spoke a pack of space cigarettes and drink a case of space beer just to see how the gravity and growing them in space affect would affect them compared to....earth beer and....earth cigarettes. Earth smoke and beer...how boring.

Another consumer product that could be grown in space could be ooples and banewnews (apples and banannas) pickle's, carrots, beet's, ochra, ect.

For the the plants to be grown all that would need to be done would be to replace one side of the ISS Module used with a reinforced piece of segmented glass that would be tinted to trick the plants into thinking it was night time and be faced towards the sun on for 24 hours a day. The tint would be set to a timer that would keep time with the sun rise and sun set zone of the area of space that it is sent to based on the time table for the same event on Earth. Other expierements could even be set to mimic the times zones for Mars, Mercury and Venus to see what type of plants could be grown based on the daily amount of sunshine taken in each day for each planet.

 

[emudude]

LoL, space beer...yummy. Taking advantage of microgravity conditions to see what kind of new food products you could come up with might be one of the small things creating a drive for space...you never know

 

[neilsox]

I suppose some people would pay a thousand times more money for space commodities at least once.
To get sunlight for ten or twelve hours out of 24 would require the entire module to be transparent. Sunlight comes through a window about 20 minutes out of each 93 minute orbit of Earth, unless the attitude of the ISS = international space station, is changed every few minutes to keep the window facing the Sun. Even then the Earth blocks the sun about 40 minutes out of each 93 minute orbit. Some plants can likely adapt to 93 minute light-dark cycles, but most plants will have issues with zero g, even the yeast that ferments beer. The tobacco curing would require a fan as convection does not occur in zero g. Also an extra air lock and a dedicated air recycling system, unless everyone is OK with the station smelling like a tobacco curring barn. Neil

 

[azorean5000]

No tobacco in space