No doubt there is a lot of research going into a human colony on Mars. We need to figure out how to grow crops and build a sustainable ecosystem in the Martian atmosphere. We need to build spacesuits that can endure long journeys across the Martian surface.
We should figure out what long-term shelter would look like, too. But man, all that sounds like so much work, you know? How are we going to kick back on Mars? What are we going to do to unwind? Never fear; Budweiser is on it. At SXSW, Anheuser-Busch announced a new research initiative toward micro-gravity brewing techniques, the end goal being a beer apt for swigging on the Martian surface.
The biggest challenge in making a space-ready beer is addressing the age-old gravity problem. It’s pretty simple: Carbonated beverages don’t work the same way in a vacuum. So Anheuser-Busch’s research is centralized around the concept of brewing beer without the need for gravity, making the final product sustainable on Mars’ relatively low-gravity surface.
“We know that colonization of Mars could be a decade or two away,” Anheuser-Busch’s VP of marketing innovation Val Toothman said at the SXSW panel. “But we want to make sure that Budweiser is the beer that people are toasting with on Mars when we get there.”
The Budweiser panel also included The Martian actress Kate Mara, retired astronaut Clayton Anderson, and Budweiser VP Ricardo Marques. “When we can enjoy a few ice-cold Buds on the Red Planet, that will be the moment when we can truly realize our dreams of space colonization,” Marques said.
That’s exactly right. Space colonization won’t happen when we build our first fully-functional Martian house, or produce the very first Martian-born human. It’ll be when we can sit on our space-porch, scratch the head of our space-dog, look out on the barren and lifeless Martian landscape and sip an ice-cold Budweiser.
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