Forget astronaut ice cream – Mike Massimino breaks down eating dinner in space for Sci-Friday #177. Turns out, you can get almost everything you want to eat in space. Note that I said *almost* everything – take a look and see what I mean:
I picked up on this video because I was doing some research for Mike.Sierra.Echo and yes, there’s a point in the story where Mike is on the space elevator and he gets hungry. How do you handle stuff like eating, drinking, and going to the bathroom? We often take gravity for granted but once you’re in space – in micro-gravity – everything works differently. Can’t afford to have bread crumbs floating around – you might inhale them!
Historically, space food started out as freeze-dried powders and toothpaste-consistency squeezable edibles. Not appetizing at all. Later, they started adding things like hot water, and spoonable food. It wasn’t until Skylab in the 1970s that astronauts got a dining room.
Things are much better now. In fact, NASA space food scientists at Johnson Space Center are developing the Advanced Food System (AFS) to provide moon and Mars missions with safe, nutritious food that doesn’t suck. Are you a space nerd? Do you like to cook? You might consider a career in space food science.
I hope you enjoyed this moment of scifi and space tech nerdery! Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 🙂
