Engineering Students Wants To Brew Beer On The Moon

Forget growing lettuce on Mars — the important space mission we should be focused on is the plan to put a brewery on the moon. A group of young scientists want to make that happen courtesy of a contest being held by the Indian startup Team Indus, part of the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. Team Indus is calling on all scientists under 25 to envision a sustainable settlement on the moon, and the winning team will launch its project aboard the Lunar X on Dec. 28, 2017.

Six students from the University of California, San Diego — who comprise "Team Original Gravity" — have been shortlisted in Team Indus' Lab2Moon competition for their idea to test the fermentation of yeast in space and brew beer on the moon.

"We all appreciate the craft of beer, and some of us own our own home-brewing kits," Neeki Ashari, a fifth-year bioengineering student, told Space.com. "When we heard that there was an opportunity to design an experiment that would go up on India's moon lander, we thought we could combine our hobby with the competition by focusing on the viability of yeast in outer space."

It's not only beer they'd be making. The team would also want to bake bread and develop pharmaceuticals for use back on Earth.