nutrients into an enclosed aeroponic chamber made of plastic. Stoner has gone on to develop numerous companies researching and advancing aeroponic hardware, interfaces, biocontrols and components for commercial aeroponic crop production. In 1985, Stoner's company, GTi, was the first company to manufacture, market and apply large-scale closed-loop aeroponic systems into greenhouses for commercial crop production. In the 1990s, GHE or General Hydroponics [Europe] thought to try to introduce aeroponics to the hobby hydroponics market and finally produced the Aerogarden system. However, this could not be classed as 'true' aeroponics because the Aerogarden produced tiny droplets of solution rather than a fine mist of solution; the fine mist was meant to reproduce true Amazon rain. In any case, a product was introduced to the market and the grower could broadly claim to be growing their hydroponic produce aeroponically. A demand for aeroponic growing in the hobby market had been established and moreover it was thought of as the ultimate hydroponic growing technique. The difference between true aeroponic mist growing and aeroponic droplet growing had become very blurred in the eyes of many people. At the end of the nineties, a UK firm, Nutriculture, was encouraged enough by industry talk to trial true aeroponic growing; although these trials showed positive results compared with more traditional growing techniques such as Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) and Ebb & Flood there were drawbacks, namely cost and maintenance. To accomplish true mist aeroponics a special pump had to be used which also presented scalability problems. Droplet-aeroponics was easier to manufacture, and as it produced comparable results to mist-aeroponics, Nutriculture began development of a scalable, easy to use droplet-aeroponic system. Through trials they found that aeroponics was ideal for plant propagation; plants could be propagated without medium and could even be grown-on. In the end, Nutriculture acknowledged that better results could be achieved if the plant was propagated in their branded X-stream aeroponic propagator and moved on to a specially designed droplet-aeroponic growing system - the Amazon. Aeroponically grown food In 1986, Stoner became the first person to market fresh aeroponically grown food to a national grocery chain. He was interviewed on NPR and discussed the importance of the water conservation features of aeroponics for both modern agriculture and space. Aeroponics in space Space plants Plants were first taken into Earth's orbit in 1960 on two separate missions, Sputnik 4 and Discoverer 17 (for a review of