I think the two most important organisms that we could bring into space with us would have to be algae or mushrooms. Mushrooms hold a significant part of the space story due to their ability to recycle materials into new parts. One of the first companies I ever started was a mushroom materials company in which we used mycelium to create replacements for ceramics, brick, concrete, and especially asphalt. Asphalt.

The company was a failure, it introduced me to the world of bio materials and helped me build the network that has blossomed into so many opportunities for me. Humans live in cities, constantly surrounded by static dead things in a concrete jungle. My motivation do starting a mushroom materials company was to steadily replace these inorganic dead things with living self-repairing mycelium to seamlessly mailed nature and the built environment in order to create a more beautiful world.



I brought some starting mycelium to the Selene-1 mission, and experimented mixing it with simulated lunar regolith [surface material, ‘soil’] with the idea of creating a self-healing building material that grows on astronaut waste to make buildings on the moon.

- Eliot Roth