Want a Martian-Brewed Beer? Americans Are Up in the Air

Budweiser will send barley seeds into space on a SpaceX rocket Tuesday (Dec. 12) to determine if it's possible to make beer on Mars. Yet a new poll indicates that Americans aren't particularly anxious for a taste of Martian brew.

The barley samples from Anheuser-Busch, the company that brews Budweiser, will fly to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, which will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is set for 11:46 a.m. EST (1646 GMT) and you can watch it live here, courtesy of NASA TV, beginning at 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT).

The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds:

• Just 11 percent of American adults say they are more likely to buy a beer that is brewed on Mars.
• 33 percent say they're less likely to buy a space beer.
• 45 percent say the beer's origin would have no impact on their beer-buying decision.
• Another 11 percent are not sure.

The national survey of 1,000 American adults was conducted on Nov. 26 and 27, according to Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is plus/minus 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Visit Space.com Tuesday for complete coverage of the SpaceX launch. 

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.