 Beer brewed with yeast flown in space might not be super vintage, but it is really interesting. So that's what we're talking about today on The Vintage Space. The beer in question is called the ground control and it comes from the Nincasi Brewery in Eugene, Oregon. And what makes the beer interesting is the yeast. Yeast is a single-celled organism. It's a fungus and it metabolizes, grows and lives off of the ingredients that make up beer. It's also the most important ingredient in fermentation. Yeast metabolizes the sugar in beer and the bioproducts are alcohol and carbon dioxide. So it's the yeast that gives the beer its carbonation as well as its alcohol content. And the yeast can also seriously impact the flavor of a beer. So if you're gonna launch this living organism into space with the idea of using it to ferment your beer afterwards, you have to keep it safe. And that was a challenge facing Nincasi Brewing founder Jamie Floyd when he had the chance to launch yeast on a rocket. The opportunity came about socially. When Jamie crossed paths with Hybridine, an amateur rocket group seeking sponsorship to get one of their rockets off the ground. Nincasi became a sponsor and, in exchange for the funding, was granted some space on the rocket. Jamie decided that it would be more fun to actually launch something on that rocket as opposed to just watch it fly. And so he set out on yeast. But even a suborbital launch like the one Hybridine was proposing presents a lot of problems for living organisms. Even something as simple as yeast. There's a build-up of positive and negative G-forces, cold of the upper atmosphere and the scorching heat of re-entry, exposure to cosmic and solar radiation, and the pressure of changing altitudes. Add to that the fact that when you have a living payload you have a very short window in which to actually recover it before you can put it to use. To keep the yeast alive Nincasi developed a cube that held 16 vials of yeast surrounded by dry ice to protect it from the heat of re-entry. This payload was mounted in a rocket in July of 2014 and while it launched fine, it didn't land fine. The yeast casing was designed to protect it for about 8 to 12 hours but it took 27 days to actually recover the payload after it landed. Needless to say the yeast strains were dead. But Nincasi got a second try in October. This time the setup was a little bit simpler and only held 6 vials of yeast. The payload was also installed in the rocket at different points so it would be exposed to less of a big build-up of G-forces. This launch was a success. The 6 vials of yeast reached a peak altitude of 77.5 miles, well above the 50 mile marker where space formally begins. And the payload was easily recovered this time thanks to better tracking. The team was able to recover it, return it to Oregon, do lab tests to make sure it was safe before using it in ground control. Nincasi's idea is that eventually people will want to be drinking beer in space. I mean, after a long hard day of plowing the fields on Mars wouldn't you like to relax and unwind with a beer? For more about the beer brewed with yeast that has flown in space, check out the links below. And as always, leave your questions, comments, and any topics you'd like to see covered on future episodes in the comments below. For daily space-type content, a lot of it vintage, be sure to follow me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space. And with new episodes going up every single Tuesday and Friday, be sure to subscribe right here so you never miss an episode.