In Colorado, where it’s legal to possess weed for recreational use but still a crime to sell it, one former NASA scientist is teaching enterprising smokers how to grow their own perfectly legal bud at home. The name of his cannabis classroom: HASH (High Altitude School of Hydroponics).
Dale J. Chamberlain cut his teeth designing and building low-gravity hydroponic agriculture systems that are now being used at the Space Shuttle, skills he’s now using to help his neighbors get high. “Your Everyman can come away with the knowledge that he or she is not going to ruin months of work and end up with a crop that is really not worth the time,” he says. “A lot of people will tell you that no one’s going to go to the trouble of growing it themselves, but in this day of GMOs and pesticides, there’s a lot of interest in this. Teach them to fish, if you will.”
He’s also not averse to bringing his new craft to his old venue: outer space. “Will there be weed in space?” he asks rhetorically. “Let’s get humanity out there first. And if humanity is out there, without a doubt in my mind. It is by far the most versatile, functional, and useful plant in the history of mankind. And whoever arrives out into the asteroid belt, I’m sure, is going to have a nice garden–which I could help them design.”
(Photo: eggrole/Flickr)
