Gary Hanning always liked space, but he never thought he’d work in the field, having grown up on a farm, having studied agriculture and genetics, and having since toiled in commercial agriculture.
But as humans look to expand their reach — creating settlements on distant planets — space and agriculture fields aren’t so far apart anymore.
“Sooner or later, I think it’s going to happen,” said Hanning, 60. “There’s a lot we have to learn to be able to get there. That’s the royal ‘we’ in plant science and astrophysics and all the rest. How do we get there and then how do we make it livable?”
With attention now on Mars, Anheuser-Busch is looking to make Budweiser the first beer consumed on the red planet, a goal fraught with complications. But the company trusts Hanning and others at its Fort Collins barley research center to make that happen.
Barley out of the research center should reach the international space station Sunday after tagging along on a SpaceX spacecraft, which launched Friday after nearly two weeks of delays. A group from the center had gone to Florida for the original Dec. 4 launch but had to return before the craft finally took off.
“I think it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of the space mentality and space research,” he said. “I’ve followed it virtually all my life. It’s a really cool thing to now be a part of it.”
Hanning, the director of global barley research, said the Fort Collins center has 26 people, but only he and two others are dedicated to the project, which was handed to them at the beginning of the year. They’ve also partnered with Center for Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, and Space Tango.
There are two experiments: The first focuses on how seeds react in zero-to-low gravity; the second on barley germination. The experiments, which build on existing research on plants in space, will stay in orbit for about a month before returning to be analyzed.
Hanning, who is used to working with barley sourced from 18 countries, can easily describe the difference between barley grown in Colorado and barley grown in Argentina. But the space station doesn’t have fields. So they’re modifying the process as they worry about temperature and gravity along with water and nutrients for the barley.
There’s still much more work to be done, but Hanning said Friday’s launch was the first step. Although he’s not sure that humans will make it to Mars during his career, he expects it to happen in his lifetime.
“It’s a long-term commitment,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time, and there’s lots and lots to learn to get there.”