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A brief history of booze in low Earth orbit

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https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/w...cocktails/

EXCERPT: It was a routine cargo resupply mission bound for the International Space Station, but [...] a rather unusual payload. Tucked away in its cargo hold were a dozen bottles of red Bordeaux wine ... It wasn’t the first time wine has left the planet, but it is by far the most alcohol that has ever been in space at once. ... This case of wine was sent to space in the name of science.

[...] The launch marked the beginning of the first of six planned experiments by the Luxembourg startup Space Cargo Unlimited, which has partnered with world-renowned researchers at several European universities to study how the space environment affects wine. Known as the WISE mission, these experiments will cover all aspects of the wine production process. The bottles of red, which will return to Earth later this fall, will reveal how microgravity affects the aging process in wine, a chemical reaction that involves tannin molecules linking together in longer and longer chains.

“We discovered the existence of bacteria and understood so many things that made life science what it is today by studying wine,” says Nicolas Gaume, CEO of Space Cargo Unlimited. [...] Gaume believes that the company’s own wine experiments could lead to equally important breakthroughs for space-age biology.

Gaume says wine appealed to his research team because it is a multi-component system that involves plants and microbes interacting in a highly controlled environment. By sending these components to space, it would allow researchers on Earth to study how the lack of gravity affects the complex biological processes that result in wine.

[...] In the span of a year, Space Cargo Unlimited has managed to dramatically accelerate research on alcohol in space. But they’re hardly the only company that’s interested in space spirits. ... One experiment on how microgravity affects the aging process of whisky was launched by the Japanese distillery Suntory ... The other was a barley experiment conducted by Budweiser ... part of its goal to establish the first brewery on Mars.

[...] It's easy to dismiss these experiments as publicity stunts, but each company — and more importantly, NASA — maintains they have real scientific value. The microgravity environment has all sorts of weird effects on plants and microbes that we’re only just beginning to understand. For example, a space shuttle experiment by Coors in the mid-90s showed that microgravity seems to accelerate certain biological processes in yeast. If scientists can understand why this happens they could bioengineer the microbes to replicate the effects of the space environment to create more efficient fermentation processes on Earth.

Space can also harm plants through radiation exposure and it's critical to understand this process if astronauts ever hope to grow the crops they’ll need to wine and dine on other planets. But focusing solely on the science would miss the other important reason for studying alcohol in space... (MORE - details)
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