Finally: Weed Goes to Space

In today’s let’s-send-seemingly-random-shit-to-space news, here’s 95 cannabis seeds, one cannabis clone, and one fat joint getting lifted 19 miles above the Earth aboard a weather balloon. Because weed in space. The puns are inescapable, but nevertheless, this is the first time the devil’s cabbage has gotten this high.

Or is it? Dale Chamberlain, a former NASA botanist who’s building automated, off-the-shelf, low-footprint grow boxes for the everystoner, may tell you otherwise. Having spent a good chunk of the ’90s on a research team that built zero-gravity plant grow chambers that flew a number of missions on the Shuttle Endeavour–and that would later link up with the International Space Station–Chamberlain knows a thing or two about interplanetary agriculture. (One of the strains Chamberlain recently showed us in his home grow? A sativa-dominant hybrid that he calls International Space Station.) With a wink and a nod he told me that he’ll “let the rumor float” as to whether or not he and others involved in designing NASA’s Plant Generic Processing Apparatus slyly snuck a few pot seeds into orbit in their day.

We can only wonder. Catch Chamberlain talking about those heady days in part two of High Country, Motherboard’s new doc on the America’s tech-enabled cannabis industry.

Reach Brian at [email protected]. @thebanderson