The fast growing cannabis/marijuana plant offers much for space travelers. From fibrous material to make everything from concrete to plastics, the ability of cannabis to provide food through its seeds, medicine and recreation through its flowers, all while producing breathable air in high quantities. One would think the cannabis plant might be at the top of the list as an essential tool for humanity to use to journey to Mars and other celestial bodies throughout the solar system, but it is not. The reason it is not I came to find out involves the unintended consequences created by prohibiting science from engaging in free inquiry.

Re-Running the Mars One Analysis with Cannabis

Understanding the wide variety of uses including how valuable a crop it is nutritionally through its seeds, I contacted the Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Olivier Ladislas de Weck. While I was happy he responded to my inquiry and even considered re-running cannabis in their Mars One analysis his response left me quite disappointed.

We discussed your request to rerun our MarsOne analysis with cannabis as an additional crop in the Biomass Production System (BPS) when you first inquired about it late in 2015. We decided against it for a couple of reasons.

Reason 1: Not enough data

His first point for not running the analysis was that all the crops in Table 3 of the paper have all had a substantial amount of data from plant growth experiments at different levels of CO2 and other factors. Cannabis does not have the extensive research done on all those factors. It appears prohibition and its chilling effect on scientific inquiry has left scientists with absolutely no idea as to its Biomass Production. While the plant may have helped the British Colonists reach the United States with sails, rope, clothes, and paper; modern science has no clue what this crop produces for Biomass at least from the perspective of MIT.

Reason 2: Not a food source

Oliver’s second point was that he did not believe cannabis would be chosen because the objective functions are to achieve a well balanced calorically sufficient diet while minimizing crop growth area. He continued that cannabis is not known to be a particularly advantageous crop from a dietary perspective. This is not actually true and he presented no scientific data to back his statement up. The truth is that cannabis seeds, otherwise known as hemp seeds, are one of the most nutritious and caloric food items we have on Earth. They’re found easily in your local health food store and can be made into a variety of dishes added to salads and more. Hemp seed oil exhibits the highest total phenolic content and antioxidant activity compared to all other plant-based oils. All it takes is a quick search of Google to find all the health information on hemp seeds as food. Yet because of stigma towards marijuana created by prohibition this scientist did not even check Google to see if cannabis was a useful food source. Even with the long list of results in Google much of the claims about hemp as food need to be substantiated by science and skepticism both. Because we are under the regime of scientific prohibition on the cannabis plant it becomes practically impossible to know anything with great certainty even around its nutritional values.

Reason 3: My agenda

The third and final reason for not running cannabis in the analysis is that my agenda for the request was to promote cannabis preferentially over other crops. This was once again false. My request was to run the analysis with cannabis the same way they approached other crops to see if cannabis might be a good plant to bring on the Mars One Mission. I’m a skeptic myself and lover of scientific inquiry, so my intention asking to run the Mars One Analysis was never for it to take preference over another crop, but simply as a way to shed light on the possible importance of a super crop like cannabis in future manned space missions.

Excuses Excuses

All three reasons given above by one of the leading scientific minds in human space flight for not re-running the analysis on the Mars One Mission were because of cannabis prohibition. The first excuse was because cannabis illegality has left a major gap in our scientific understanding of the plant. Second excuse had to do with the lack of knowledge around cannabis as a food source, and the third had to do with my “agenda” to promote cannabis over other crops. Science has been hampered here and free inquiry was silenced by lack of knowledge and stigma.

It should be noted that I don’t blame Oliver for his perspective because I understand that modern science lacks much data as to the value of this crop due to its continued prohibition. Its illegality has nearly eliminated all research and inquiry into the value of the plant for nearly a century. Scientific studies conducted for decades mainly focused on finding the harms caused by ingesting cannabis and not on topics like the biomass production of the crop. Society’s belief that cannabis is harmful led to a huge gap in our scientific understanding of marijuana that continues its legacy today through MIT and the Mars One team lacking the scientific data to re-run their analysis with cannabis.