I have always been interested in plants and growing them. I grew a lot of food crops while growing up in the US midwest. I also grew a swamp in my college apartment, to the great consternation of my housemates!
I have also always been interested in space. I had the opportunity to work at NASA for several years in both technical and business/legal positions. In about 2008, I began blogging about space life support technology and their applications for sustainability and reuse on Earth. The first blog was called Sustainable Reentry, but I later discovered that term refers to criminals leaving prison, so I changed it to Sustainspace.
I am an alumnus of International Space University, and worked for Singularity University on their Space and Physical Sciences adjunct faculty and as an innovation advisor, where I was involved with participants who were creating numerous start-ups, some related to space, some others to plants. This work inspired me to try my hand at yet another start-up, this one devoted into helping to better enable growing plants in space for the purpose of improved astroculture and to benefit Earth agriculture. This new venture is called Orbital Genomics, of which this Spacegrower’s site is part.
There isn’t a lot of funding or resources for astroculture, and we are trying to change this, through this community, Orbital Genomics and Sustainspace. Hopefully, together, we can create an ecosystem that can greatly improve and accelerate this tiny industry and vocation.
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