Escalante
Image source: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Collection.
This is Congressman Fulton and this is 1959, two years before Kennedy gave his speech to land the US on the Moon. And it’s 1959, and there’s a committee in Congress investigating food in space and they’re interviewing a witness from the Department of Agriculture.
And Fulton is getting frustrated with their lack of vision and imagination. And he’s a politician remember, not a designer, not a science fiction author, he’s a Congressman, and he comes out with this incredible statement, this incredible macroscope statement, and, well, let me read it to you.
Possibly in space the approach to vegetables might be different.
This is Fulton speaking, he’s asking a question of a witness.
Did that ever strike you — because we are thinking of three-dimensional vegetables, maybe in space, where you have a lot of sunlight, you might get a two-dimensional tomato.