Slashdot Mirror
Eating in Space
Roland Piquepaille writes "What do you think astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) ate for Thanksgiving? Roasted turkey? Wrong answer. In "Orbital Thanksgiving," NASA tells us they had tortillas and gives details about food in space. If the dining view, 200 miles over the Earth, is great, preparing meals is quite a challenge. For example, there is no refrigerator or freezer aboard the Station, so food must remain good for long periods at room temperature. And you need to avoid crumbs which could float around. This is why tortillas are favored over bread. This overview contains additional references and includes a picture of a cosmonaut preparing food in the ISS galley."
I think that this article begs the question as to why it is necessary to keep sending living biomass (i.e. human beings) into space.
Previous 20th-century arguments hold that despite the enormous cost and level of complications for keeping the biomass alive, the humans have the greatest ability to do useful work and respond creatively to unusual and unexpected situations. But certainly now the advanced robots can do everything, kilogram for kilogram, that the humans can do at much less cost (not to mention pseudo-'heartfelt output of emotion at the tragedy') when the biomass ceases living due to any one of the thousands of things that can and will go wrong in such a hostile environment.
Why should we consider these people 'heroes' for doing such pointless things like transporting their bodies into space at such enormous cost and dubious achievement? Heroes are the people like the team that recently got the cost of a watt of solar electricity reduced by an order of magnitude. Heroes are people who things that are extraordinary, inspiring, and, above all, useful.
Spending billions of dollars to launch a crew-cut poster boy (American, Chinese, or Russian, doesn't matter, it's the same guy) into space when a monkey or robot would do just as well does not generate 'heroes'. It's just PR for bloated defense contractors (American, Chinese, or Russian).
Please don't give this nonsense about the 'science' that is being conducted in space. There is no science in space, there's nothing in space.
All you space geeks should just spend more time in Hollywood learning how to make movies that will satisfy your obsession with this topic and stop wasting so many billions of tax dollars that are needed now for so many more important things.
Thank you,