from the WNIN Tristate Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James, and this is two Main Street.

So what's for dinner?

How about some fresh vegetables?

But not from a backyard garden or a grocery store, but harvested inside your home or apartment from a greenhouse where there is no soil.

And the growing season is year round and it's fully automated.

No weeds.

Insects are watering, and planning is as simple as inserting a coffee pot.

Well, it sounds like a perfect recipe for farming on your terms.

Better quality food, better for the environment, less waste with a guaranteed harvest, rain or shine.

And helping bring all this nutritious food to the table.

Is research done here on earth and in space?

A local firm is growing plants with hydroponics, using water without the use of soil in a controlled environment.

And there is space gardens aboard the International Space Station, the vegetable production system, or veggie helping NASA study plant growth in microgravity and providing fresh food to the astronauts.

So what's on the future salad bar?

My guests are Scott Macy, co-founder of our new and Evansville based agricultural technology startup company, which is growing plants right now in a soil free environment.

And Mandy Scurry, who is the local solar system ambassador trained by NASA and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

So, guys, welcome to to Main Street.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scott.

Let's start with you.

Take us back to your days at Purdue.

You were an undergrad there and a NASA funded research project to grow plants in space.

What's that all about?

Yeah, thanks for having me, David.

I had an incredible opportunity while studying my undergraduate degree at Purdue in mechanical engineering technology to be a part of the NASA funded research study at the Purdue University Horticulture College under Doctor Carey Mitchell.

Indoor farming, where this concept of growing in a completely controlled environment has the benefit of having a controlled environment so we can create the temperatures and humidity's everything we associate with climate and weather.

We can create that indoors to farm year round.

But unlike a greenhouse which has limited environmental control, we are creating light.

We are using LED lighting technology.

A recently available technology that can create the light that we need for plants to grow in a more energy efficient format than previous lighting methods that were very energy intensive, and that research was optimizing the spectrum, which is really just a fancy way to say the color of light.

The plants need to grow to maximize that energetic efficiency of the plant growth, but also maximize the nutritional value and yield outcome of the system.

And a lot of NASA get involved in this.

They hear about your research or what?

Well, NASA has been looking into this longer than I've been alive.

They have been thoroughly looking into methods to grow food in future space colonies.

We must think about these environments.

Water is a precious resource, so it must be used extremely judiciously.

We do not have top soil on any of these climates.

We don't even have the environments that we need to grow food on.

Places like the lunar and Martian colonies that will exist.

So hydroponics, a soil is space growing.

Media is a great hedge against those constraints.

It gives them the ability to grow in a more water efficient and climate controlled environment.

Now, Amanda, as an educator for the NASA program, of course you get a lot of questions, I guess, about space food.

And this has to be an exciting project.

Oh, yes.

Space food is that's one of the questions that people have a connection to, because I think a lot of those spinoffs have kind of made it into the everyday life of the person.

I mean, attaching is an obvious example.

While not originally developed for the space program, it was adopted by the early Space program and therefore became a household item.

And then of course, you have an any, souvenir shop.

You can find astronaut ice cream, which is, dehydrated astronaut ice cream, which is always popular.

And so that just really gets it into the minds of almost every American.

Yeah.

So, Scott, what are you growing at your company and explained the company's name?

Yeah, our company name is a new which is inspired by the Irish goddess of good harvest and fertility, which really represents our mission, brand and values of empowering individuals and communities to grow their own pure produce.

We grow just about anything that can be grown in a greenhouse.

Virtually all types of leafy greens culinary herbs grow extremely well in the system.

These plant varieties that have a limited shelf life and oftentimes have a degradation of quality and flavor in the supply chain.

We can give a great consumer value experience by growing locally, but something very unique to our design and our ability is to be able to grow fruiting plants, plants like tomatoes and peppers, and increasing variety offering in the future something that we're very excited about, that we've developed a unique technology that gives us the ability to grow these fruiting plants that require much higher levels of light intensity, but to do so profitably.

Now, you describe these nutrient pods as a kind of a Keurig for plants.

Yeah, absolutely.

I even, brought one here for you to see today.

But for anybody listening, this is something that looks a lot like a K-Cup.

But instead of making a coffee beverage, we're using this to grow plants.

It contains all the needed nutrients and the seeds.

Pre-Select it to grow that it is as easy to use as care, where the user simply places a pod in the system and harvest the plant when ready.

No added steps in between.

And we're scaling the production of this right here in Indiana.

These advanced compostable polymers which unlike other non compostable plastics that take a long time to break down thousands of years, these break down in months in your backyard.

And we're scaling the production of this right here in Indiana, leveraging the polymer industry experience that exists uniquely here in Evansville.

Now, Amanda, as the NASA's solar system ambassador for this area, what are you hearing about the future space colonies and how would these colonies be fed?

Well, that's a that's a huge problem, of course.

As Scott mentioned earlier, water is, an extreme, you know, extreme commodity when it comes to spaceflight.

Just think about it.

Anybody who's done any sort of camping, backpacking, you know that water is your main issue.

It's essential for human life.

And for most of the foods that we eat, however, it's very heavy.

So any ounce that you have to add on to a spacecraft to launch it is an issue.

So anything that you can do, to limit space and weight, in spaceflight helps.

And, you know, these technologies that they're developing on the International Space Station and spinoffs from that research, like, news, project, are just essential to having that, fresh food available.

While they have a pretty good system for sort of ready to eat meals.

That is not something that is palatable or nutritious in the long term.

So when you're when you start thinking about long term visits to space, such as like a lunar colony or Martian colony, and like Scott mentioned, the addition of fresh food is essential not only for physical nutrients, but psychologically as well.

That is very important, to living off of our planet Earth, especially when you're talking about these long missions.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Now, Scott, what got you fired up about this new technology?

Growing food in a small, controlled environment?

Well, I think it was two parts.

I think it was theory and actual pragmatic implementation of what the technology could be.

I had a fantastic introduction to the technology of Purdue and the mentors who were leading a lot of the technologies that we see in this controlled environment, agriculture, space.

But I'm proudly from Evansville, Indiana, which at one point was the refrigerator capital of the world.

And I think Mandy really hit the nail on the head when we talk about water, logistically being a very challenging, good to move.

And frankly, what we are doing has already been achieved in a different format, in a different industry, but for all the same reasons.

We think about what the ice industry was, what it has become and what it is now.

The ice industry historically had been an ice harvesting model.

We were climate dependent.

We waited to water to freeze outside.

We would harvest it in a colder climate and ship it to where it was not cold.

Then we had ice factories, centralized production facilities that made us climate independent, and we would freeze ice year round, delivering it to the individual.

And today we have refrigerators in decentralized ice factory model.

Ice is a water based good and it's highly perishable.

Therefore it's best produced at the point of consumption.

The same could be said for vegetables, which are more than 90% water by weight, which is highly perishable and is also a climate dependent process.

And today, vegetable farming looks a lot like the ice industry 100 years ago.

We wait until the season climate permits, and then we ship a highly perishable, good to the end recipient, and we see a lot of food deserts as a result of that.

We're seeing a rise of indoor vertical farms, centralized vertical farming facilities, a bit like the ice factories.

But now it's becoming decentralized.

And I think that convergence of my upbringing, having grown up in Evansville and having been aware of the industry experience that exist here, both from a polymer material science standpoint, but also a distributed controlled environment, system, network, historically refrigerator.

But now these growing appliances was the perfect intersection of, I think, upbringing and experience together to give me the motivation to create this as an accessible system for both consumer households and communities outright.

And you have whirlpool engineers that when whirlpool closed, they had to have something to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

That intellectual talent is here.

And even though the industry may have offshored in many instances, I have the great ability of access and people with decades of industry experience, and they're happy to help.

And I find that their experiences are invaluable and frankly, very hard to find elsewhere in the world.

I bet, I bet now when someone goes inside the iconic building behind the offices, what will they see?

They see an oasis.

They see what effectively looks like a box on the outside until you step in.

In the case of the appliance, it's having a refrigerator in your home, but one that actually grows food.

It's kind of like a Garden of Eden.

As you look through this door and you pick out what you want.

In the case of our commercial systems, the larger ones you can actually walk inside.

It's like being inside a space age urban garden.

But it's in downtown Evansville, Indiana.

It's a rapidly deployable system that could be set up in a matter of hours, giving that building or a community group to grow on site locally.

Now, Mandy, both you and I, we both have to have toured this facility.

And, what's your first impression when you walked in here?

Just.

Wow.

I mean, I think the wow factor.

Yeah.

And I love the fact that, the whole system is, already ready for the normal person, like me or, anybody, you know, listening to the program, usually with a lot of these technologies.

And I explain this to, you know, I was talking to Scott about this, too, that they start so big.

You know, any of these, you know, technology start so big on a big commercial level, and then they have to pair them down eventually for the average consumer.

But that's not the case with this.

It's actually started small and because it had to to fit on an international international Space Station.

So, that's, that's what makes it so amazing is that we don't have to wait.

And you can just see the whole process from that little pod.

Yeah.

And to see these plants growing and they grew very quickly.

Don't these got absolutely about three times faster than they otherwise see outdoors.

My guests are Scott Macy.

He's the co-founder of a new and Evansville based food research company, and Amanda Mandy scurry, the local NASA solar System ambassador.

So, Mandy, your role with the space agency, a volunteer, of course.

And you have a day job as well.

I do, I, I volunteer for NASA.

So I do not get paid for anything that I do on their behalf, but I love it.

Spend a lot of time doing it.

But I also work part time, as an after school educator and out of school educator.

I'm the Stem coordinator for a YMCA outreach.

So we do out of school programing and introducing concepts to kids free of charge through grants.

At our community center right at the end of South Garvin Street in the Caldwell neighborhood.

What about your training to be an ambassador?

Oh, well, that's all done.

Through the internet.

Miracle of the internet.

Thank goodness we have web webinars that we have access to, on regularly.

So almost every week we have something we can, update ourselves on.

However, to becoming an ambassador, it is an application process, just like any other job.

In fact, to my surprise, they were more thorough in contacting my, my people that I wrote down.

I mean, almost as thorough as my secret clearance I had at the Pentagon way back in the day.

I mean, I that we had to have five references and they called all five of them, to make sure that I was legit.

So that's good to know that, we're 1000 strong, but we've all been vetted and we've all been continually educated.

And we're it's just a great group of inspiring group of people to be part of.

Okay.

Pentagon.

Who said that?

I can't let that one go by.

What are you doing at the Pentagon?

Well, that actually connects to, what led me to be an ambassador.

My degrees are in communication and space studies.

I have a bachelor and a master's of science.

And one and the other, and so, fresh out of college, I moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for the Missile Defense Agency, at the Pentagon as a contractor.

So I did communication for them.

So I did that, for a few years before coming back to the Midwest, and starting my family here.

So.

Missile defense.

Yep.

Can you talk about that?

Are you.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, these are.

You would be assassinated.

Something?

No.

Okay.

No.

It's it's a Pentagon.

A Pentagon program.

It's, joint forces.

So I worked with generals and, colonels from all of the branches, and basically, it's everybody working together, to form a, you know, complete package on being able to destroy, ballistic missiles, either from the start when they first launch, and Midflight or when they're coming in.

So, there's lots of different things based on different agencies and different branches of the military.

And the Missile Defense Agency kind of brings them all together.

Was a Space Force.

That was before the Space Force.

That was before the.

Okay.

So this was in actually, I got my job one month after September 11th, which my mother wasn't exactly impressed with, but, I think the Pentagon was the safest, you know, it has ever been one month after the September 11th tragedy.

So definitely Scott, you are growing plants vertically on towers at your firm.

Are these towers being marketed yet for home use?

Absolutely.

We've been in the market for a few years now with the residential space for pilot field tests for individuals have had the opportunity to use the appliance in their home, provide invaluable feedback.

We're still making steps to scale the residential system to make it more accessible to the consumer space, but we are now marketing this to commercial applications with our recently announced commercial licensing partnership with Eco Solutions, integrating this into shipping containers for neighborhoods and communities to become self-sufficient and growing produce from our rotary towers now is a great nutritional value of these hydroponic plants, and you compare them to store bought and there is not much of a comparison there.

There's much better, right?

Yeah.

I mean, common knowledge would tell us that if we shorten supply chains for highly perishable good, you're going to get much better quality and food safety, nutritional value and flavor, which is a key, key consumer kind of quantity, quality choice that's influencing that.

And we've seen through some preliminary testing that the nutritional value was significantly higher on average, about twice that of what was at the store bought equivalent.

Now, Mandy, you work with young people and Stem research, maybe some future scientists or astronauts in those, those groups, they have to be excited yet be excited to tell them about this project.

I do I am I you know, he doesn't know it yet, but he's going to get a request to come speak to my lab, and tell them all about, the project.

The kids love gardening.

We we do a community garden, at the school nearby.

And they love gardening, but this, this would bring it to the next level for sure.

And we can do it, like.

Like you said all year round.

It's really amazing stuff.

And any opportunity to show them, you know, local technology, as always a highlight.

And also, you know, just an ability to see spinoffs from space is always a great thing as well.

Now back to the food pods and, how they could help in world hunger in areas prone to droughts and widespread famine.

Now, Scott, you've been to Africa, with your rotary hydroponics company.

Tell me about those trips.

Yeah, that was an opportunity that I did not originally set out to do, but frankly, found me while I was at Purdue University.

Following my graduation in May of 17, I was asked by some of the administrators at the university if I would volunteer as part of a mentor and a program called the Mandela Washington Fellowship within the United States Department of State.

So this, group has a fantastic and very well implemented mission of finding top tier candidates to implement meaningful change in sub-Saharan African countries.

So the US embassies within these respective countries will vet thousands, in some cases, tens of thousands of applicants working to be in this fellowship program that is very selective, highly competitive, but brings them to the United States, where they are assigned an American business professional mentor to teach them about technologies that could be implemented in their home countries.

And Purdue, being a leading agriculture school, was getting a great number of inquiries about hydroponic farming, and the university asked me to come in and be a mentor.

After becoming a mentor, I became eligible for reciprocal exchange grants, where we actually implemented low cost, more simplistic off grid hydroponic systems and very drought food insecure regions of Africa, particularly the Sahel South at the Sahara Desert.

What, like Sudan?

Not been in Sudan, but have been very close to it in some of the neighboring countries northern Cameroon, northern Togo, near the border of Burkina Faso.

A lot of these areas that unfortunately have a lot of conflict has a large refugee stream coming from it, and there is an urgent need to feed these people sustainable and to better yet, even create entrepreneurial business models where they themselves can start reinvesting their profits into themselves, their families and their communities that have been upended and now have an opportunity to restart.

And if this can be done locally while sustainably producing food, it's a win on three different fronts.

So what's been the follow up to The Hill to those trips?

How have they implemented these programs in these areas?

Absolutely.

I would say each case kind of works at a different level.

In some instances, we're just teaching them about the fundamentals of hydroponics.

So we'll go with a very simplistic system that can be made all from locally sourced materials.

And if we can see success demonstrated with an entry level system, then we may begin integrating elements of the technology that we've developed here in the United States to have a higher yield output vertical system.

In the case of Lissu, to which is a sovereign kingdom within the country of South Africa, we've had a great relationship working with a fantastic woman named oxo, who already had a hydroponic greenhouse and has now dramatically multiplied her yield output by implementing these solar powered aerial towers inside her greenhouse.

And that is now a viable business.

It's standing on its own and feeding not just herself, but members of the community and providing gainful employment for individuals who oftentimes struggle to find long term employment opportunities in some of these countries.

So you got the thumbs up from the royal court, I guess, you know, it may have been a bit more grassroots than that, but the country has been extremely supportive of it.

Oh that's good.

Okay.

Now, Amanda, food and space, you have some interesting anecdotes about what the astronauts eat.

I would like to eat.

Yeah.

I think the the most fun story about food and space, actually is sort of a lesson in what not to do.

Okay.

So, in the early days of the space program, we started with one person in space, and they didn't even, necessarily have a mission long enough to have to eat in space.

Yeah.

Alan Shepard is one of the, like, 15 minute flight or something.

Yeah.

So they, you know, ate a substantial meal beforehand, and then they were fine.

But as we got into longer spaceflight through the Gemini mission, which was, two manned, crew, there was food, brought on board and sometimes not food that was approved.

Oh, in the case of one mission, astronaut, John Young, brought on board a corned beef sandwich.

Which he presented to his commander, Indiana's own Gus Grissom from Mitchell, Indiana.

Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but bread is strictly forbidden.

And, spaceflight because of the microgravity, environment and the crumbs that bread can provide, and then float into instrument panels and into all sorts of nooks and crannies and cause all sorts of havoc.

Bread has always been completely for because of the yeast.

No, it's just the crumbs.

I think it's the crumbs.

Yes.

And so, it's really hard to contain in a microgravity environment.

Okay.

Which is why you always see astronauts eating tortillas rather than bread.

And so, Gus Grissom, while he enjoyed the praying quickly, pocketed literally his half of the sandwich, so as not to cause any damage to the spacecraft.

But, as far as, current day astronaut meals, they are, a reconstituted, dehydrated food for the most part.

And so they would, you know, they inject water either warm or cold, depending on what temperature you want your food to be.

And then eat it that way.

However, one thing that is, I think very interesting and directly connects to the gardening is that, due to microgravity, your flavor, your taste profile changes and so things taste very bland due to the, the redistribute of your blood flow in your body.

So, hot sauce is a huge commodity on the space station, as are peppers.

And so astronauts love it when they have an experiment, to grow peppers in their gardens onboard the space station, because those are very, very tasty to them.

Oh, I bet I bet y'all that bland food, they need something.

Yes.

And so they take, if there's enough, from the experiment, they will take those fresh, vegetables, and greens and, and, as I heard it described by one engineer, take everything out of the pantry and come up with something wonderful as a special treat.

For their, their meal that day.

Peppers grow well in your system.

Oh, yeah.

They've done extremely well.

We actually participated in the NASA chili Pepper challenge, and grew very well up with Espanola chili peppers that were absolutely delicious and grew just fantastic in the environment.

Now, a trip to the grocery store, we see, perishable vegetables stored in these large appliances to prolong the decay and rot.

A lot of that food eventually thrown away.

And, there's also a lot of waste on the farm and in shipping as well.

We hear a lot about carbon emissions and how impactful that can be towards contributing to climate change as a greenhouse gas.

And by all means, it is a potent greenhouse gas, but small in comparison to methane or even nitrous oxide, which can be 80 to 300 times more, respectively effective as trapping heat in the upper atmosphere through the greenhouse warming effect.

All the food that goes to the landfill that we overproduce and is lost in the supply chain aggregates in the landfill, which is an anaerobic decomposition environment, meaning without oxygen it is covered.

It produces methane.

So we not only have a massive environmental impact that happens with industrialized agriculture, but for the overproduction and the downstream waste that happens as a result, which is all the more advantageous.

And the reason why we create home compostable consumables, ones that, unlike other consumables used in similar applications, will fully degrade within a natural home composting environment, one that is aerobic with oxygen.

So we don't have to worry about the emission of these potent greenhouse gases.

Now we talked about the veggie garden.

There's also an advanced plant habitat on board the International Space Station.

It's a growth chamber for plant research.

You know anything about that?

Well, they're they're continually doing a variety of research.

In fact, a new component was just launched, earlier this month, a new plant growing component, to the International Space Station.

They are continually trying to change and adapt and figure out ways to do it.

As we mentioned earlier, water is a big thing.

And so, figuring out ways to, use that water efficiently aboard the space station when gardening.

Also, space, of course, is always a thing in space.

So, the International Space Station was the size of a football field.

Still is.

You know, you need to try to pack in as much as you can per square inch.

So, that's that's a huge thing as well.

There's always a variety of experiments happening, with these.

And while as far as I'm aware, none of them are permanent as far as a permanent garden that the astronauts have strictly have access to, many experiments have yields that are such that the astronauts still get to partake in, some in addition to what is sent back, for study.

So that's very good.

Now, Amanda, we already have state space tourists now, don't we?

And astronauts are spending weeks, months at the International Space Station even longer than they want sometimes.

Yeah.

Right now.

That's right.

And NASA is already planning for space colonies, and the colonies have to eat.

And we talked about that's a big issue.

It is a big issue.

I think that I mean, when you have human beings, I mean, you have to serve.

I mean, you have to have food, you have to survive.

And we are, you know, developed in such a way that we expect food to be in a certain way.

So while for temporary reasons, you can get by on, MREs and that sort of thing.

Meals ready to eat.

For long term, it's more psychologically viable to have things that are more like home protein and protein, right?

Oh yes.

Protein.

And that's pretty easy to replicate.

But the the minerals and the fiber in fresh fruits and vegetables are not so easy to replicate in pill form.

So the science fiction movie idea of taking a pill and having every all the everything that you need, we have not yet realized.

And and to be honest, you know, taking a pill just doesn't have the same human experience as eating fresh, fruits and vegetables.

And another thing I found really interesting that scientists and engineers didn't even realize what happen was the astronauts love the smell.

As you can imagine, the space station has a certain smell, from human beings living on it without gravity assisted showers to just all the mechanics involved.

So all the, you know, metal and the plastic and the everything that is going on, on the International Space Station.

So astronaut it's psychologically just really love harvesting those fresh fruits and vegetables and even flowers because of the smell.

And I just really reminds them of home and gives them a lot of comfort.

And that's something you can't replicate.

And there's no sink.

I understand.

On the International Space Station, they had this to wash their utensils with the wipes.

Well, yeah.

I mean, when you think about it, and especially when it comes to gardening, if you think about it, a lot of our, our traditional gardening methods involve gravity, whether you know it or not, whether you think about it or not.

Soil stays on the ground because of gravity.

Seed stay in that soil because of gravity.

Rain falls on to the soil because of gravity.

And when you're in space, at least on the International Space Station, you don't have that gravity.

Now, when you go to something like the lunar surface or the Martian surface, you do have a fraction of the gravity we have on Earth.

But it's not the same.

But we still have that necessary, that need to, use water, and space as efficiently as possible.

And so, orbit gardening and colony gardening are a little bit different for various reasons.

However, they do a lot of those things that we're learning in orbit will transfer pretty well, to the long term habitation of the lunar surface on the Martian surface, or anything about having insects for protein harvesting, insects, eating and, I, I mean, I have not for the space program, but just colloquially, I have I understand a very, easily, dog thing.

And you got to sell it.

I do do and I think that's, I mean, that's, that's the whole thing.

I mean, just like taking a pill for all your food.

I mean, it's just going to be a hard sell for a lot of people.

Are eating an entree from a tube, right?

You know, it's just, Yeah.

It's just not something that's satisfying, all right?

Yeah.

Our culture just is not there.

So, Yeah, we have to go where we are, I think.

Okay.

All right.

I got some factoids here.

And where are they?

Okay.

The NASA food tradition.

Steak, eggs and orange juice and tea.

That was before Alan Shepard's 1961 flight.

No coffee because it's a diuretic.

Yeah.

That's true.

Anybody who has their morning coffee knows that.

That's right.

And the Russian urine orients 108 minute flight.

He sucked beef and liver paste through a tube.

Yummy.

And, it was a way.

Yeah.

It was believed at one time you couldn't swallow.

And zero gravity it.

Well, yeah.

I mean, when you don't ever been there, you don't know, but luckily, there's no problem with that.

Like I said, the main issue is the change of your taste profile.

And so having, a different, you know, tasting things a lot differently is the main issue.

But astronauts now, at least on the American side, get to pick their menu from start to finish with the help of NASA.

Dieticians.

So if they want to eat shrimp cocktail, which apparently is a very popular meal on the space station, if they want to eat shrimp cocktail every single day, they're allowed to.

So, this is something that, astronauts get to try all the meals that are available to them and create their menu, with a dietitian.

Now, we talked about them craving hot sauce.

Yes.

Salt and pepper have to be in liquid form.

Yes.

And that goes back to that crumb thing that I talked about.

Right.

So those particles can cause serious damage to, the mechanics and the, you know, all of can be sprinkling salt and pepper shakers.

I mean, that it takes gravity to sprinkle anything.

So from water to salt.

So, you don't have that there.

Luckily.

Surface tension, helps with a lot of the eating, and putting things on utensils.

So a lot of people do think of that, you know, eating from a tube and sucking through a straw kind of thing because you can't open up a package, but you can you can open up packages to a point.

And so they will open up the package and use, silverware, to eat it because surface tension does keep the food on the fork.

So and there's no separate way to add creamer, sugar or sweetener, to tea or coffee.

So it's pre-mixed for the astronauts.

I thought that was interesting.

Astronauts just you add hot water?

Yeah.

They have their drink, and there's a merlin.

Is the cooler aboard I.s.s.?

Like we talked about.

No kitchen sink.

So utensils have to be clean with wipes.

No booze in space.

Oh, no.

They're there for serious business.

So, a corned beef sandwich is one thing, but, Yeah, bring it on.

The, the party drinks is is not a good idea.

We did find out that.

Well, this research cosmonauts were given cognac rations for their immune systems during those early flight operations.

That was a long time ago.

Yeah, but no vodka.

No.

Scott, there's a project.

The Perry Central High School.

A greenhouse project?

Yeah.

That's been just a fantastic collaboration, I think, of industry and educators working together, and I can't speak highly enough of Jody Carey or Rainy House or any of the stakeholders that are involved in Perry Central that made that happen.

They have a fantastic student experiential learning program where they look for problems that industry's facing, and they want to find ways to deploy students into the workforce, but in a classroom environment so that they are getting credits to be productive in industries, so that if they choose to go straight into the workforce, they could have relevant workforce experience coming out.

Or they may be inclined to pursue a career in that field at a higher education institution.

We've given them a number of parts and seen just as fantastic assembly of creating a low cost commercial system design that we actually then replicated on the African continent, and they created standard operating procedures, bill of materials, created a high degree of fidelity and kind of a product documentation perspective that we were lacking that we didn't have the bandwidth to support.

That was a fantastic student project.

And of course, they get to grow all the healthy vegetables that they love.

Mandy's absolutely right about the things that we cannot recreate.

These countless phytochemicals, things like anthocyanin or antioxidants, which are actually cancer preventing in a lot of instances cannot be synthetically recreated, really are only created within a biological process, need to be grown on site.

And it's just so inspiring to see the students get as excited as we are about this field and be actually hands on the ground, engaged into the experience, but also to know the impact that that's going to deliver to their community, because they don't always have access to the fresh produce qualities that they need to live a happy, healthy life.

A new recently received the Hunger Tech Innovation Grant.

What is that?

That is, a really visionary program put on by the great team agronomists here in the state of Indiana, finding ways to address food deserts.

And they look at this from three different layers.

They first look at it from food security.

Do you and your household have enough food to eat to live in a productive, happy, healthy life?

The second is nutrition security.

Are you meeting your nutritional goals?

Are you eating healthy foods beyond just food itself?

And then the third dimension is actually looking at the impact of what certain diet related illnesses are.

Things like diabetes, heart disease, certain forms of cancers are caused by diets, and more than 50% of Americans are affected by diet related illnesses today, amounting to over $2 trillion in national health care expenditures in the US.

And that's just the expenditure.

We're not even looking at the lost worker productivity hours as a cost of us not fully accepting that food should be thy medicine.

This is ancient wisdom, but we're now seeing modern technology support the local growth of highly nutritious food products to support.

The second layer of this helps support nutrition security, but we're even seeing really innovative groups like Vance Health and others who sponsor at the Agora Novus Hunger Net Hunger Tech Challenge that are looking at opportunities like produce, prescriptions, waste, food is medicine.

Absolutely.

And it should be treated as such.

And health insurance providers who already provide discounts will even pay for gym memberships, for example, because a healthier person who works out more is less likely to get sick and have a higher health risk.

Silver sneakers yes, yes, the same is being looked at food now, and health food can be a prescription.

And there's a lot of great work happening in our community and others to really champion this movement.

Now, we talked about the vitamins in these prepackaged meals for the astronauts.

Those might have been so break down over time.

So that's another reason that we need these fresh vegetables in space.

Peppers, beans, other antioxidant rich foods provide some space radiation protection.

Yeah.

And radiation is a huge issue when it comes to long term and deep space travel.

So what I mean by deep space is anything beyond, Earth's gravitational pull.

So luckily, the International Space Station has some protection from that radiation we do from our atmosphere.

Right?

But we still need our sunscreen and all that sort of stuff.

But we have our lovely atmosphere that protects us from most of that.

Cosmic and solar radiation.

But then when you're in, low Earth orbit, which is where the International Space Station is, you are not protected by the atmosphere, but you're still protected by the Earth's gravity, magnetic field, which you don't think of that much unless you're using a compass.

But it works out very well to protect us from radiation.

However, once you leave the protection of that, then you have the issue.

And deep space travel of radiation exposure and radiation exposure.

Of course, is a huge issue when it comes to, things like cancers, developing in, the crew.

So, that is a huge thing to and it also affects the plant growing, you know.

So, that's something that is very much needing that's the difference there for the colonizing plant, you know, the plants for colonies versus the plants and the growing for the International Space Station.

Now, back on Earth, there will still be soil based farming, of course, in the future, orchards, certain crops that just won't fit in this pod.

Base designs obviously would.

Corn would.

That wouldn't work, would I?

Said the same thing and he had an answer.

I believe we have grown a baby stir fry version of corn at some point.

But what we really focus on are those highly perishable crops, ones that don't generally have a shelf life, that really are best consumed fresh or don't necessarily freeze well.

And I see this acting harmoniously with soil farming.

One of the reasons we've gone to such great lengths developing these home compostable pods are not just for the sustainability sentiments that this demographic really commands, but it's practical as well.

A lot of our users began transplanting the seedlings that they were growing into the soil environment and growing.

So when we think about reforestation efforts, when we think about special fruiting plants, where there is a premium paid for greenhouse supplied clones or propagation seedlings, we can produce that in these modular commercial cultivation systems to help support commercial agriculture at scale.

Now, we want to broaden you your operation.

Are you broadening the variety of, food based pod based crops.

Are you experimenting with a lot of different vegetables every day, every night and day?

What we are very, very fortunate to have had is significant funding support from the United States National Science Foundation through the SBIR or Small Business Innovation Research Grant program.

We are very fortunate to be phase one, phase two awardees to actually combine artificial intelligence to these cultivation systems.

It's one thing to be able to grow the plants with LEDs, to be able to have an optimized environment.

It's another to have a feedback loop.

When we just think about what this experiment entails, you need a highly trained plant scientist, an individual that has the intuition, kind of like a farmer with decades of experience, can look at a plant and understand that that's a nitrogen efficiency, or that's a drought stress carrot stick that I am observing on this plant.

We have now reached a technological parity where we can combine that level of expertise using AI with cameras to actually monitor the plant growth remotely, autonomously, at all times, as if there was somebody sitting there watching it at every moment.

So when we grow these new leafy green varieties, these new culinary herbs, these new fruiting varieties, we learn from it at a rapid rate than what we could have even learned just a couple of years ago.

And we're so lucky to have such a diverse, talented team.

I've a number of team members from China and Japan, and they brought their cultural cuisine preferences with them, things that I would have never thought I would have loved.

Like Mizuno and she she's the leaves are just absolutely fantastic.

I love it in my stir fry.

But I'm now inclined to learn more about their cuisine and culture as a whole, because these ingredients are just so delicious, and I find it to be an excellent complement to what I already know I like to eat here.

Are there certain plants that really thrive with these pods?

We really target.

We go through a very regimented process of what grows in the system, because being able to grow is just one check box that we have to make.

We do make sure it grows alongside other plants.

Certain plants don't get along well with each other.

We need to make sure that it's conducive to polyculture or mutual growth.

We want to ensure that the Grove trial is in a reasonable duration of time.

That relative to the quantity of plants in the system, the user is going to get a daily or almost daily harvest experience from the system.

So it's not just a novelty, it is a viable source of food production.

We also look at things like physiology, which is a fancy way of just saying geometry.

We don't want something that gets so big, it's going to overcrowd the system or become so massive it's going to be difficult to harvest or operate inside the system.

But we found peppers to do extremely, extremely well.

They're very hardy, resilient plants.

There's a lot of great research happening developing hybrid dwarf varieties of tomatoes that do very well.

And I'm very optimistic about some other fruiting plants that will be exciting to talk about once we have success shown at a replicable scale.

And these are marketable vegetables, too.

Absolutely.

We call this pure produce.

This is a new tier of quality outright.

It is an assurance that there's absolutely no preservatives.

There's absolutely no pesticides.

We don't even allow pests into the system, so there is no need for it.

This is a tier of quality beyond that of organic that ensures locally grown in total purity given to the individual who is the consumer of the produce and its better nutritional and flavor profile because it is locally grown.

Are you a gardener?

Mandy I am not, but, Yeah, apparently that skips a generation.

My mother is.

My daughter really is fascinated by it.

Unfortunately, she has me to help her, which is no help at all.

But I did, participate in a when I was a kid, and a for each project where I grew space tomatoes.

To see how, you know, tomato seeds exposed to the radiation of space, change the growth cycle.

And the answer, in my case was nothing at all, the same as a control.

So, but, my mom, of course, that was when I was living at home, and she could help me with that project, but, yeah, I and unfortunately, I love it.

I think it's a I wish I was, I just it's just not a skill that I have.

I'm much stronger with the hot glue gun, I'm afraid.

Now the solar system is.

You're kind of like your your backyard.

I guess you love that.

All of ours, right?

It is.

The eclipse had to be a big deal.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

I think I'm still recovering from that.

I, to be honest, in the case of those four months, and even before the turn of 24, I did 65 different programs about the eclipse anywhere from, you know, media interviews, to classrooms, like, huge, you know, huge presentations to a big audience to just a few kids.

So, and all age ranges, it was so much fun.

And, how lucky.

Where we on eclipse day.

I mean, it was just the most amazing experience to share with my family, so, I don't think we'll ever forget it.

I know I won't.

It was a very remarkable experience.

I don't regret any one of the 65 things I did.

So anything to look forward to in the next maybe 10 or 15 years?

Yes, I am, I've always been, I my interest in space was really sparked by the moon landings.

While they all happened sadly before I was born.

I just find it fascinating.

Any time I see a beautiful full moon and I look at it, I'm like, human beings have walked on that, and it's just, a really a remarkable and amazing thing.

And we are finally going back.

And the people going back will look more like me.

In other words, the first boots on the ground will be female.

And I think that is just a huge, huge thing, for society as a whole.

And so the Artemis program is already started.

Has already had a successful uncrewed flight, unless, of course, you include Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep, who were, you know, Zero-G indicators aboard the uncrewed flight.

Hugely successful.

And now Artemis two will bring humans, including the first woman and the first person of color to ever visit the moon.

They will stay in orbit at this time.

But they will be the first ones there, which is, a huge thing, for our society, I think.

When will that happen?

The scheduled launch of Artemis two is next to the end of next year.

So the end of 25, that's the schedule.

Launch crew has already been picked.

You'll have, three men, one of whom is Canadian.

His first space flight will be to the moon.

Wow.

Can you imagine?

And so he's long been a trainer through the Canadian Space Agency partnership, with NASA.

He has long been a trainer of astronauts, and now he is, in the in the astronaut corps.

Also, seasoned, spacewalker or Eva specialist.

Christina Cook will be, the first woman to the moon.

And our pilot, will be the pilot for Artemis two.

Will be one of those, not a tourist, mind you, but one of those private astronauts.

Okay, so, he has flown, aboard a flight, a private non NASA flight.

But has now joined the official, you know, the astronaut corps at NASA and will be going to the moon as a pilot.

So, it's really, I can't wait.

I can't wait to go back.

I know you're excited.

That's all.

I know you'd love to go into space, I'm sure.

Probably not at my age.

And not to mention the fact of, you know, I wanted to leave my my family, but, I love sharing about it.

I love telling people about it.

People just don't know about it.

Do you love space movies?

I do, it's fun when.

Especially when I was studying my master's degree in space studies.

We would all go, you know, to see Armageddon together and rocket.

So I'm.

I'm landing on an asteroid.

Yes.

I am able to separate, the art from the science and and just enjoy it and feel smarter when I know that that will not happen.

But, Yeah, I really enjoy it.

More closely, though.

We have a launch here just in this fall.

We're sending a probe to Europa.

It's called the Europa Clipper.

Europa, if you're not familiar, is one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, our largest planet.

Galilean moons.

Galileo discovered those four moons through his first telescopes.

And so we are going to visit that icy, moon and see if it has the properties that might support the very beginnings of life.

So we're the engineers and scientists are believing that Europa has that water under the ice, sheet on top that might have those thermal vents that started life here on Earth.

So, just like that.

So that'll be very, very cool.

Of course, Jupiter's a long way away.

So while we'll have a very exciting launch in October just a couple months away, we have to wait to 2030 for, Europa Clipper to arrive at Jupiter.

So, that's a that's a long term, you know, patience and patience.

That's right.

Okay.

Now, Scott, what's your vision for Anu in the next five years?

Say, let's say.

Yeah, you know, it's in some ways hard to tell because we're so fortunate to, I think, have beaten the odds.

You see so many startup companies that either struggle to attract the right talent, the right capital, the right industry partners to bring systems to market.

And I think we've just been incredibly fortunate to have been at the right place in the right time on a series of times in a row.

I would say in the next five years I would see our impact becoming extremely diversified, working with a number of consumer and kind of customer verticals that we can serve, whether it be military, grocery, academic partners that want to have experience of learning, or vertically integrated supply chains for the individuals that they feed and supply.

I do see this looking a lot like the victory Garden movement of World War two.

Oh yeah, where at one point we saw 50% of all the food in this country consumed was grown locally in backyard gardens and alleyway trellises.

I think we're just taking that same ethos with the modern technical spin to it, to create a much more localized means of producing food.

What's your favorite hydroponic veggie that you'll you consume?

Oh, that's a good one.

Probably mustard greens.

Well, for me, which has a bit of a horseradish flavor to it, it's very strong.

It's I wouldn't say it's for everybody, but me personally absolutely love that.

I'm sure to be popular on the space station.

Now, do you, like using a salad or do I do both?

You know, I'll have it as a relish on a sandwich.

I will put it in stir fry.

I think it's really, really versatile.

Overall.

And very nutritious.

Can you imagine a hydroponic, cookbook?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think we're going to see an increased convergence of AI in everyday life, finding ways to intercept the data of what's being produced and grown and being able to make recommendations and cuisine preferences, not just on what you have available.

And there's some apps that do that today where you can input the ingredients you have.

But asking you questions like, how did you feel about that?

Like, did you like that?

I think we're going to see a very intimate culinary experience in the future as well too.

So, Amanda, what's, your vision for the, Solar Ambassador program here?

Well, I think the solar investor program is amazing.

The the thing I like about it is that while we are all vetted and trained, as I mentioned, we are allowed to proceed with our own strengths.

So while I do a lot of youth programing, like through my extensive connection to the Girl Scouting here, community here, I'm a lifetime Girl Scout Gold Award earner.

I do a lot of Girl Scout programing, so youth programing is really my specialty.

But others, like Tony, Brian and Jasper, he's another local ambassador.

He is really into telescopes and astronomy, so he does a lot of work showing people, you know, the cosmos through, telescopes and organizing events to do so.

But then we have, Gary Bar on the West side, and, he really, really enjoys, sharing with adults and older people.

You will find him doing presentations at nursing homes and that sort of thing.

And, he likes to, reminisce with those folks about, the early days of the space program and to share with them how it's continuing on.

Meanwhile, we all come together for really big events.

And so that is also a very good resource as well.

Tomatoes, they do well on your.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, they do especially.

Well, we really look for the door for kind of cocktail cherry tomato varieties, but they do exceptionally well.

Okay.

Well you guys are making me hungry.

This has been very informative, guys and educational.

And, like you said, mouth watering as well.

That's.

Thanks a lot for your expertise.

Thank you.

My guests have been Amanda, Mandy Scurry.

She's the local NASA solar system ambassador, and Scott Massey, co-founder of the Evansville based Food Research.

New.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank you, thank you.

I'm David James, and this is two Main Street.