Funny story: I was rejected by YC last batch. But I get it- I thought they look for traction and what not, so I rather made the pitch video on a very specific aspect of Hexafarms- which is monitoring, since some people were willing to check it out. No doubt YC would reject it. On the other hand, Thiel Foundation reached out to me, but they had some drop out thing and what not which I was not able to fullfil (and after a while they also stopped reaching out too).
The Real Martian is great. Go back and watch the Hab 1 videos, it was truly sad to see snow collapse it. he's now quit his full time job and joined some startup and they're about to go full steam ahead into Hab 2 after months of modelling and other stuff. Ultimately they're looking at creating a commercial product where a family, or a couple of families, can erect a habitat and grow a decent amount of their food.
Hab 1 had aquaponics and fish, not sure where Hab 2 is going to look like as they haven't shared much but he's just started churning videos out again the past month or two.
It's a really neat project, I just hope he continues to show as much as he did with Hab 1 now that he's part of a startup.
and Beanstalk (a YC company) https://www.beanstalk.farm/