Click & Grow is taking first steps towards growing food on Mars

Crazy news, fellas - we are building a 5 km2 (53,000 ft2) underground thermonuclear cucumber "factory" where fresh vegetables for the entire state of California will be grown at a fraction of the current price! The plant will be constructed outside Reno, Nevada and located near the Tesla Gigafactory. The plant will feature a novel energy source relying on thermonuclear fusion.

By combining Deuterium and Tritium, a safe thermonuclear fusion occurs, releasing Helium and energy to grow cucumbers

"By replicating the natural processes occurring on the Sun, we have found a way to produce light for plants without the transformation of energy to electricity and back, which enables us to drop the price of the end product by a considerable amount, and speeds up the growing process." Priit, the head of the Click & Grow's R&D (you might also know him as our gardener) says. “This is truly the technology of the future, and we've made it a reality. Being able to replicate the Sun and grow food with thermonuclear energy has only been possible in the wildest dreams of scientists and engineers so far.”

A tokamak (a device using a magnetic field to confine a plasma), which is the heart of the “garden”, is already in place and has already been successfully tested. "The cucumbers love it. Also, the excess heat from the fusion reaction can be used to warm up the irrigation water," Priit states. The Click & Grow technology also uses 96% less water than the regular type of agriculture, which leads to incredible savings and very high energy efficiency.

"By using an ultra-efficient energy source, we can produce cucumbers and tomatoes at a price up to 10 times cheaper than the produce of the greenhouse producers of Mexico," Mattias Lepp, the founder and CEO of Click & Grow, explains.

A model of the cucumber grow chamber

The construction is estimated to end in April 2018 and the plant should be fully operational by the end of 2019. But that's not all. We also aim to collaborate with Space X and NASA to make this technology usable for sustainable food production on interstellar flights and future Mars missions. Let's change the world!

Illustrations: Janar Raidla for Click & Grow