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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."
Actually I always believed that astronauts sucked pastes of different colors out of plastic sachets, brown-orange was "beef with carrots", and brown-yellow was "turkey breast with potatoes".
If the often-nauseous smells coming from the gally aboard a plane are any indicator, the odour of heating food could be really nasty in space.
And what's this about "no freezer"? What exactly is outer space, if not cold? No airlocks aboard the ISS?
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How could they write this article and not mention Tang ?
umm.... orange powdery goodness....
I, for one, was amazed at the clarity and crispness of the scenes filmed inside the ISS. I have seen other 3D IMAX movies too: Ghosts of the Abyss,etc...but this one beats them all by a huge factor.
I know for sure it is (or was) running in Atlanta (Mall of GA), DC (Smithsonian Air and Space Museum) and Boston (Aquarium IMAX) last year. Google for it...definetly worth the effort. A few reviews and clips here.
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I wouldn't have thought keeping things cold was that big a challenge in space.
Temperature control is actually quite a problem so the ISS has a number of features to keep temperatures regulated. Overall, space in LEO is cold (averaging 0 F). The problem is that it is far too hot on the sunny side (250 F) and far too cold on the shady side (-250 F). Therefore the ISS is extremely well insulated to maintain an even temperature across the entire inside. But this insulation leads to other problems -- heat builds up from all the equipment. Thus, the ISS has a giant radiator to dump excess heat into space.
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IT's worth it just for the footage of earth from orbit. Brought tears to my eyes, I swear.
The imax shots of the ISS are fantastic too.. you just can't appreciate the size and scale of this thing from a TV.
After all, even with months-long space station stays, today's space stations are the equivalent of summer camp compared to what future astronauts will go through. Even if warp drives prove possible -- an enormous if -- astronauts will have to spend years aboard spacecraft to even reach relatively nearby parts of interstellar space.
That being the case, the growing of food in space becomes practically a necessity. As space voyages lengthen, it becomes laughably inefficient to produce on earth the tons of food neccessary for the trip , and blast it into space.
Growing food in space poses all kinds of challenges that make today's pre-packaged problems look trivial. Right from the start, it appears that producing meat, milk, and eggs in space is going to be prohibitively inexpensive. So instead, NASA is funding investigations into growing plants hydroponically--probably extracting minerals from astronaut's crap and urine. Doing this gets around the problem of having to send tons of food into space.
The challenges of having animal agriculture in space are so extreme that it appears that virtually all serious research on space-borne food production is confined to vegan foods. This is purely a practical thing -- it's not as though the scientists at NASA have developed a sudden interest in animal rights. In fact, current studies involving vegan food production in space involve using rats to assess nutritional adequacies of what's being grown.
But vegans can take heart. Even if they don't bring down animal agriculture on earth by 2525, it's a fair bet that Major Tom, blasting towards the Dog Star, will be eating a vegan diet -- whether he likes it or not.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I work for a local grocery chain in Houston and the store I worked at 2 months ago provides alot stuff to the ISS program. For instance, they order 110 lbs. of asparagus each time. What's interesting (but not suprising) is they called me to get the LOT number and other information pertaining to the origin of the asparagus. I had to direct them to our supplier but I thought it was cool in any case. Not to mention that I had a good sales ring that day...
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They have heaters as well. Freeze-dried foods are often prepared with hot water. Heat is actually readily available on the station; as a by-product of running the equipment and computers, as well as the solar panels collecting power and storing it in the batteries. Large radiators constantly bleed off heat from the vehicle. On the Shuttle, the payload bay doors double as giant radiators. On arrival into orbit, the doors are opened almost immediately, even if there are no space walks planned or items to deploy, etc... The vehicle generates so much heat, that if the doors can't be immediately opened, the mission would be scrubbed, and the crew would be forced to return home.
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That explains this $136,216.20 proposal to NASA to study Development of Extended Shelf-Life for Tortillas for Long-Duration Space Missions".
They wanted to (or did?) use MRI scans of tortilla dough to determine whether there were any changes on a molecular level that could be linked to tortillas taking on a bitter taste after being on the shelf for extended periods of time.
I wish I could get my own NMR spectrometer by saying that I want to study tortillas.
Does anyone else find this to be hilarious?
I bet there are refrigerators, but I expect they are reserved for scientific experiments, and not food storage, no doubt due to both space and power considerations.