Page 18 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2012

Menu on the Moon Menu on the Moon KITCHEN WIZARDRY NASA chefs were no slouches. When by the tricks of conventional cookery didn’t work, Sam Orez they invested some of their own. Many of their offerings were provided with varying amounts Throughout history, intrepid adventurers of water removed from them.”Add water and and successful armies of conquest have eat” or “Add water, heat and eat” were the only marched on their stomachs. The wagon trains directions astronauts needed. Breakfast was a and cattle drives that opened the American breeze: cereal, sugar, and powdered milk in a frontier would have stalled without Cookie and single pouch. Add water, and voila! It would his chuck wagon. Camp cooks have always snap, crackle and pop with the best of them, ruled their little kingdoms, be they isolated even if it didn’t come with a prize. lumber camps, mine operations, or construction You can taste some of this handiwork in projects. commercially available camping and trail foods. All of which NASA researchers took a knife, fork, and spoon, but also a pair of (And we can thank NASA impetus for those into consideration as they prepared to breach the scissors for opening food packets. A refrigerator small, full-panel pull-off lids on cans - they frontiers of Space, and freezer completed the homelike thought of them first.) atmosphere. With things looking up on the MERCURY POISONING? equipment side, the food side got better, too. THE LONG HAUL Unfortunately for the early Mercury Astronauts could now select from 72 items. And all that while, NASA was gearing astronauts, Buck Rogers and Isaac Asimov had They seemed to have everything but a maitre d’ up to feed astronauts for prolonged periods. The more influence on their meals than Martha and a decent wine list.. orbiting space station has facilities to provide Stewart might have. The menu consisted of frozen, refrigerated, and thermostabilized food unidentified snacks: cubes textured like dog EATING LIKE EARTHLINGS (heat-treated to kill off the bad stuff). biscuits, freeze-dried powders as appetizing as Given the confined dining space, an NASA had to give up its passion to just Sahara Sand, and tubes of glutinous matter astronaut’s food choices were more contingent add water - the space station couldn’t generate resembling toothpaste but not nearly as on the development of packaging, preparation, enough - which meant that astronauts could flavorful. The cubes crumbled, the powders and serving equipment than on available foods. finally eat fresh food. Moreover, every four would not dissolve, and those tubes - they were The concoctions were already available. astronauts had their own microwave/convection the first to go. Fit fare for Martians, maybe, but Earthbound, we’ve got egg substitutes, oven; no more line ups to liquify and heat those not for humans. hamburger extenders, chocolate bars without first cups of morning coffee. cocoa, artificially flavored and colored fruit, With all these technical advances has NAME THAT FOOD and so on. In space, so do astronauts - but come a quantum expansion of the menu. Gemini astronauts had it better. they’ve had to wait for suitable packaging. Astronauts can choose from nine different Packaging improved. The ever adventurous cereals, some with fruit; nine different chick food scientists at NASA now dared to identify PACKAGING THE MOVABLE FEAST entrees; ten different vegetables; four flavors of the food for their astronauts - for example, Space shuttle meals limit each astronaut yogurt; regular, decaf, or Kona (excuse me!) shrimp, chicken, apple sauce. This was one step to one pound of packaging waste daily, a day’s coffee - and that’s just for starters. for mankind, but still a long way from the real food supply having a gross weight of 3.8 thing. Maybe that’s why astronaut John Young pounds, including snacks (this means that more CHECK, PLEASE! smuggled a corned beef sandwich aboard a than 25 percent of a meal package is meant to be The menu on space flights seems to have Gemini flight in 1965. Gus Grissom ate it, but thrown away - and if you think that’s a lot, have reached such gourmet standards that private Young was officially reprimanded (the first a look at almost any frozen dinner available to citizens are paying millions of dollars for just a astronaut to be reprimanded for anything). us nonastronauts.) short hop. Of course, there’s still no wine list, Months ahead of a flight, astronauts plan but when tourists can plan their own menus THE AGE OF TANG their own meals. Engineers review their choices months before tying on the bib - that gives Grissom may have washed down that to make sure they won’t weigh too much (the NASA lots of time to procure the best sandwich with a swig of Tang. meals, not the astronauts). Then nutritionists ingredients, not to mention using the acumen of Pillsbury/General Foods had been trying review the menus to ensure the shuttle won’t be expert chefs and the latest technology to ensure unsuccessfully to foist the powdered orange harboring a junk food addict or budding optimal quality and freshness. drink on a highly suspecting public for three anorexic. Too much packaging and too much years. But once Tang qualified for the space waste food (what we Earthlings call leftovers) CHIX IN SPACE program, sales shot up. Everybody wanted to try could screw up the garbage compactor. Just NASA knows that accessing remote the “drink of the astronauts.” prior to the flight, the food packages are space frontiers may require space flights that individually color-coded and stored in the last for years, so they’ve started to figure out THE END OF HIGH-FLYING HASH shuttle galley. ways to fashion a self-contained, self-sustaining As the Apollo program went into orbit, food system - shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey, NASA’s faith in the skills of their astronauts A MEAL THAT STICKS TO YOUR.. not to mention Silent Running. improved. This time it actually provided them TABLE The cities in space that cosmologist with spoons - another leap forward. But special To an astronaut, the single most Stephen Hawking talks about will require the containers had to be designed to overcome the important technological advance for space flight same approach. NASA has already sent near-weightlessness of the cabin. Nobody wasn’t all-purpose duct tape or crazy glue, it (unplanted) tomato and mung been seeds into wanted their pea coup stuck to the ceiling any was Velcro. The individual packages containing orbit, as well as chicken embryos, just to find more than they wanted to have to chase after a full meal could be Velcroed to a tray and all out what effects were negligible. And NASA shrimp that floated off their dinner tray, Another opened at the same time. scientists have been fiddling with hydroponic boon was hot water to rehydrate those powders; Previously, packages had to be opened one at a (that is, grown only in water) lettuce in space that meant fewer lumps and better flavor. Still, time and consumed before the next was opened. simulation labs. no one in orbit was getting fat. Otherwise, the first package could float away Help in this regard has come from the while the astronaut snipped at the top of private sector: The tomato seeds courtesy of PLEASE PASS THE POTATOES another. Shuttle crews can now have a full- H.J. Heinz, and KFC footing some of the bill for Skylab, launched in 1973, changed course hot meal reconstituted in a recognizable the “Chix in Space” experiments. everything - it had an actual dining area, with a form on a dinner tray within 35 minutes. Not We were getting kind of bored with table and chairs (that diners had to strap bad. “spacecraft metallic” anyway: Make way for themselves to). Utensils now included not only billboards in space! []