Beer in Space? Is it Commercialism or something else?

[Bob]

Budweiser Will Launch Barley into Space Next Month to Begin Research on Future of Beer

Budweiser is upholding its commitment to be the first beer on Mars by confirming upcoming experiments on the International Space Station with plans to send and study barley – one of its key ingredients – into space in early December.

The reason?

Earlier this year at the South by Southwest conference, Budweiser announced its goal to be the first beer on Mars – offering a colonized red planet the same enjoyments provided here on earth, including fresh beer!

And while socializing on Mars might be in the near-distant future, Budweiser is taking steps now to better understand how its ingredients react in microgravity environments so that when we get to Mars, Budweiser will be there.

To kick-start its research on microgravity beer, Budweiser is partnering with experts in the field, including CASIS* who manages the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, and Space Tango, a payload development company that operates two commercial research facilities within the National Lab.

Together the group, along with Budweiser’s innovation team, will initiate two barley experiments via SpaceX’s upcoming cargo supply mission, scheduled to launch on December 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Once on the International Space Station, Budweiser’s barley will stay in orbit for approximately one month before coming down to be analyzed.

“Budweiser is always pushing the boundaries of innovation and we are inspired by the collective American Dream to get to Mars,” said Ricardo Marques, vice president, Budweiser. “We are excited to begin our research to brew beer for the red planet.”

Budweiser’s innovation team selected barley, one of its core ingredients, to be the focus of the first two experiments in space. Malting barley is a process that results in the high-quality malt used in the Budweiser enjoyed today and the research on the International Space Station will unveil how the barley seeds react in a unique microgravity environment.

One of the experiments will focus on barley seed exposure with the second testing barley germination. Not only will the research offer insights on steps to creating beer on the Red Planet, but it could also provide valuable information on the production of barley and the larger agricultural community here on earth.


http://www.anheuser-busch.com/content/dam/universaltemplate/ab/newsroom/2017/11/Budweiser_Takes_Next_Step_to_Be_the_First_Beer_on_Mars/Bud%20on%20Mars%201.png/jcr:content/renditions/featured.png

Scheduled to launch on Monday, December 4, twenty Budweiser barley seeds will be sent to the International Space Station, packaged in two Space Tango CubeLabs™ on SpaceX’s CRS-13 mission.

The seedlings will be in orbit for approximately 30 days, before being brought back down to earth for Budweiser’s innovation team to analyze – setting the foundation and blueprint for Budweiser’s next move in brewing the beer of the future

ref: http://www.anheuser-busch.com/newsroom/2017/11/budweiser-takes-next-step-to-be-the-first-beer-on-mars.html


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPYEzHxVQAAKXu2.jpg

I wonder how carbonation will fare in space? Flat beer or something acceptable?

[Bob]

https://i1.wp.com/www.boozist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Budweiser-on-Mars.jpg?resize=533%2C800

No Joke


http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-031317c-lg.jpg

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2017/11/22/21/news-112117c-lg.jpg

[Cardillac]

according to Jim Marrs beer even existed in Sumeria/Babylon-

Larry

[Star Tsar]

according to Jim Marrs beer even existed in Sumeria/Babylon-

Larry

vjTrrU6d6fA

pCtFLvIldDo

:focus:

[Bob]

Is the program "Commercialism" - that's the question..

Commercialism: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/commercialism

"Commercialism is the practice of making a lot of money from things without caring about their quality."

"British English: commercialism noun - article


One popular way to define “commercialism” is to say it is rooted in “the market” or market systems. Economic conservatives like this terminology because it has a political valence: the word “market” implies “free market” or “competitive market” which invokes the theory that freedom and democracy are naturally achieved through private property and investment (think “ownership society”), and that all things non-market are associated with its opposite, totalitarianism. Liberals and progressives often use this sense as well, because they think of the market as a system driven purely by greed, by cheap manipulative tricks done in search of the quick buck. There’s certainly a kind of truth to this — think of how, say, gratuitous cleavage is another obvious sign that the TV is tuned to a commercial channel.

But there are two problems with the left’s use of this term. The first is simply that one shouldn’t concede to the conservatives the notion that capitalism is identical with the competitive market. Corporations are arguably as much about limiting markets as supporting them. Capitalism generally relies on a delicate mix of stabilizing institutions and dynamic tendencies. As CBS founder William Paley once said, “sudden revolutionary twists and turns in our planning for the future must be avoided. Capital can adjust itself to orderly progress. It always does. But it retreats in the face of chaos.”[1] (Eileen Meehan has usefully suggested “corporate rivalry” as a better term than “competition” to describe the peculiar dance of the elephants characteristic of the Time-Warners and Disneys of our world.)

But there’s another problem with the left’s derogatory definition of commercialism as market driven. There’s a tendency to think that, since the market is based on self-interest, it is based on greed and is therefore immoral. When the villain of the film Wall Street, Gordon Gecko, proudly proclaims that “greed is good,” liberal viewers may enjoy gasping at the audacity of such a claim (and feel smugly satisfied at Gecko’s subsequent downfall in the film). But basically this simple disdain for market greed rests on a rationalist vision in which the satisfaction of desires is bad because it is opposed to reason or the “public good.” This cuts to the heart of some of the discussions we’ve been having on Flow of late: This assumption is problematic intellectually, because it relies on a version of Cartesian dualism in which bodily passions are framed as the opposite of the rational acts of the mind. And it is also problematic politically: most people do use media to satisfy desires, and a politics based on the notion that most people are debased is doomed to self-marginalization.

Perhaps a better way to think of commercialism is to focus on commercials, as in advertisements. Free markets are fine, when they are truly free and truly markets. But advertising support, the use of commercials to pay the bills, is essentially what even Mark Fowler called an “indirect market mechanism [wherein] the advertiser acts as the representative for consumers.”[2] If the arch-marketeer Fowler grants that there’s something “indirect” about the advertising system, that points to a weak link in his chain of reasoning. And advertising is indeed an odd and politically unsatisfying way to organize television; advertisers have their own agendas, which are not identical with most ordinary folk’s concerns.

Adorno and Horkheimer once observed that the “eccentricity of the circus, peepshow, and brothel is as embarrassing to [the culture industry] as that of Schoenberg and Karl Kraus.”[3] Adorno and Horkheimer’s problem with the culture industries was not that it was “low” culture; they could appreciate the carnivalesque, the genuine “lowbrow,” at least as well as Fiske.

Their problem with was the odd and numbing effect of the highly coordinated and rationalized character of cultural production once it is wrested from the street and the carnival and awkwardly filtered through the needs of institutions dedicated to reducing the risks of mass producing consumer products.

This is why TV so often seems to be almost but not quite interested in the lives of its viewers; TV is connected “indirectly,” as Fowler put it, at one remove from the complexity of viewers’ needs and desires. A media reform movement that focuses on the disappointing character of that “indirectness” might go further than a rationalist disdain of desire itself.

Then is anheuser-busch doing this as a stunt, commercialism, or do they really want to "aid" the consumer? Being first on Mars? with their product?

Commercialism does appear to be prevalent during the holidays (possibly obvious if we look closely at motives), does it not? Deep stuff, huh? It is not just about beer then...

[Bob]

(as an aside, would I try Martian Beer (brought back to earth?) :) Probably, but i bet it would be priced out of my humble budget.. :focus:

[Lifebringer]

Yep, get those Martians drunk, and take their planet.
Hmmm...sounds like we know how that turns out.

"Martian beer. A real out of this world experience.":cocktail:

[Bluegreen]

"One six-pack to go, please!"

http://media.giphy.com/media/dORujEb6Elv2M/giphy.gif
ks_voD-dRtk
:o