How wine and chocolate can fuel Earth’s interstellar travels

Research on the International Space Station has shown that long-term exposure to microgravity has ill effects on the human body, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss and vision problems. Humans also start losing their immune system if they spend too much time in microgravity, according to a study by Princeton University and the Buck Institute, as mentioned in the UK Telegraph.

Fortunately, two things humans have enjoyed consuming on Earth for centuries will go a long way toward limiting the ill effects space travel has on the human immune system: red wine and dark chocolate.

It turns out that red wine and dark chocolate contain substances called flavanols that help to strengthen the human immune system. Nutritionists have long touted both as a part of a balanced and healthy diet. Now, scientists have started to investigate the flavanols from red wine and dark chocolate as a way to keep astronauts healthy on long-duration space missions.

NASA might provide the flavanols in supplement form. Pills are cheaper to launch into space than bottles of wine and chocolate bars. But people living long-term on space stations, lunar bases or Mars settlements will want the pleasure of drinking wine and eating chocolate along with their health benefits. So future space settlers will have to establish wineries and chocolate factories where they live.

Future human inhabitants of the moon and Mars will have to be self-sufficient for many things they need to live and thrive, particularly food. For years, researchers have grown food on the International Space Station that the astronauts have eaten. Vegetables provide few if any challenges. Astronauts grow the veggies and either toss them into a salad or cook them.

Wine and chocolate have unique challenges. Growing and harvesting grapes and the cacao beans that make each product respectively are just the first steps.

According to Wired, scientists have already grown grapes on the ISS to discover if exposure to microgravity and radiation could create hardier vines. One can envision the same experiment being conducted by astronauts on the moon and Mars to study how low gravity affects the growth of grape vines. 

Later, astronauts could start enclosed vineyards with lighting, temperature, humidity and other conditions tightly controlled, similar to the type envisioned by Grow Mars. Some horticulturalists have already successfully grown grape vines in greenhouses. Hydroponic grapes are yet another possibility.

Turning grapes into wine is a complex process. It includes growing the grapes, harvesting the grapes, pressing the grapes, fermentation, clarification, and finally aging and bottling. The low gravity environment of the moon and Mars may provide further challenges as well as opportunities.

One experiment storing 12 bottles of Bordeaux on the ISS found that wine ages at a faster rate in microgravity than on Earth. How wine would age in low gravity remains to be seen in future experiments.

The history of chocolate in space dates back to the first human in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who brought a tube of chocolate sauce on his epic space mission. More recently, according to Smithsonian Magazine, a proposal was floated to make chocolate on the International Space Station as an experiment. “In orbit, there’s no sedimentation because gravity doesn’t drag down the denser ingredients in a mixture. That means the crystal structure of chocolate might get larger—and might taste better—if it’s made in space.”

Creating a chocolate industry in space presents some unique challenges. Chocolate is made from beans, which are actually seeds, found in the fruit of the cacao tree. Cacao trees grow in tropical environments neat the equator and grow as tall as 40 feet high. If grown in an enclosed farm on the moon or Mars, they are likely to grow even higher. Creating dark chocolate is just as complex as making wine.

Along with the cacao beans used to create chocolate, a sweetener such as sugar is often added. Unless future moon and Mars settlers want to also cultivate sugar cane, perhaps homemade dark chocolate would use artificial sweeteners, at least at first.

Some time may pass before the first space settlers are producing their own wine and chocolate. But when they do, space will become more like home to them.

Mark R. Whittington, who frequently writes about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.