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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."
It's great to know that our space program is finally get properley underway, and that astronauts can now eat well. Next project could be getting TV for them?
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"And you need to avoid crumbs which could float around."
No Homer!
They'll CLOG THE INSTRUMENTS!
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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A what about drinks ? Have the effects of alcohol in space been studied ? I volunteer ! Emm
I wouldn't have thought keeping things cold was that big a challenge in space.
Oh no... it's the future.
Too many computers, electronics, etc. on the ISS to have food fights. If you want to have one, you have to go outside.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Quoth the article:
Space and zero gravity offer challenges for food preparation.
On the other hand, zero gravity offers unique advantages for food preparation: If you're careful, you never need to run out of counter space.
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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 guess they didn't want to mention the Enhanced Gaseous Nitrogen Dewar system, which keeps samples frozen at -321 degrees Fahrenheit...
Or perhaps the ARCTIC freezer system, with 38 liters of -20C degree cold stowage...
ISS Fact Sheets
/sig
"Station crews have more than 250 food and beverage items they can select from the U.S. and Russian food systems, but they have to make their selections as early as a year before their flight," Kloeris said. "The choices range from barbecued beef to baked tofu, with probably the most popular item being shrimp cocktail," she said.
They even have a wider range of available food than I do, and I live at a 5 minutes walk from the local supermarket...
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I doubt that was their main course. I mean, I live in Mexico, and I like tortillas as much as the Mexicans, especially when they're warm and fresh from the tortillaria. But they hardly qualify as a meal in themselves. I mean, they're made from cornmeal (or flour, if you go for those kind). Surely they had something with their tortillas, like freeze-dried ice cream maybe.
I'm surprised that none of the astronauts has snuck a small herb garden on board. Some fresh basil, chives, or parsley would surely enliven the food. You could probably grow these plants in a dirt-free medium by stuffing damp cloth fragments into a sock and keeping it damp. You could then velcro the planter near a window and let it grow.
The plants might grow strangely in zero-G, but I'm sure the leaves would still taste OK.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The lack of refrigeration does seem kind of odd, given that we always hear that space is "cold"
However, thinking about it some more, I guess it's because of the relative vacuum of space that makes it more like a gigantic insulator - if you have heat on the ISS, it'd be difficult to dissipate it because there is no medium to carry the heat away. At least, I think that's what might be the case.
Microgravity is the technical term for the gravity in space. There isnt actually zero gravity, there is always something exerting force on you. The weightlessness comes from being in orbit, not from the lack of any gravity.
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.
I think "free fall" is an acceptable term as well, and describes more accurately the situation. After all, gravity isn't reduced that much in LEO, but staying in orbit really means falling down the horizon.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Facing a vacuum does not make a freezer. Ever heard of a Dewar (vacuum) flask? I don't know, 19th century technology and already forgotten about in the 21st.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Space is not cold. Space is not warm. Space is a vacuum.
Space is a great insulator.
I wonder if they would complain about the Turkey being dry up there too..
What do you think astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) ate for Thanksgiving?
Uh... That question hasn't really kept me sleepless. Considering that you're talking about the International Space Station...
Well, now that the Spanish astronaut has left the station, Americans count for a whopping 50% of the astronauts aboard the station.
I.e. one guy.
Thanksgiving?
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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'm surprised that none of the astronauts has snuck a small herb garden on board.
You know--
No, no. This is too easy.
The coolest voice ever.
Have the effects of alcohol in space been studied ? I volunteer !
They probably stopped after the first volunteer mistook the Sun for the Earth and attempted re-entry.
The coolest voice ever.
I have solved the problem.
People on the ISS should order nothing but pizza, it solves the storage problem;hot or cold, the quality problem, the crumb problem...it's gold baby!
And as a bonus since most pizza chains don't have their own rocket program it'll take more than 30 minutes to deliver it, so the food is free!
PS Maybe the ISS crew member from the US should have had that
Turkey and Gravy flavoured pop
from Seattle. Un-carbonated though.
Hello, President Clinton? I figured if anyone knew where to get some 'tang, it'd be you. Shut up!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The ISS is cooled down by emmitting infrared radiation through gigantic heat sinks that use two closed loops: one with water - to take the heat out of the stations interior and to the heat sinks and the oher with ammonia - to take the heat out of the water and into the heat sink tubing (ammonia freezes at a much lower temperature than water. Water would just become ice and would clog the tubes.) Now THIS is some heat sink that could solve heating problems of a huge super-computer.
I wonder what did MIR use for cooling down?
I like this chronology - a very exciting reading.
You can't handle the truth.
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...
Vacuums are not insulators.
I remember a great demonstration given in the Toronto Science Museum. A piece of rubber tubing placed into a bell jar. A vacuum pump extracting the air until it reached a near-vacuum. Pause... allow air back into the bell jar. Strike rubber with small hammer, rubber shatters and when touched, little pieces of it are _very_ cold indeed.
An object in a vacuum radiates its heat and unless there is an equally warm object radiating heat back, it will cool off until it reaches the temparature of the surrounding radiation, which is (I believe) quite close to absolute zero in darkness, and probably somewhat higher (but nothing like 0 Celcius) in direct sunlight.
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Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Many male astronauts prefer to shave as little as possible, and all agree that it's one area in which their female colleagues have all the advantages.
So women in space have hairy legs and hairy armpits? Cancel my ticket, I'll stay on Earth.
think about it eat all you want and still weigh next to nothing, literally. is space eating the next big diet?
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?
You said: "Do you have any idea how fast heat radiation will cool an object in space?"
Stefan's Law states: P = (sigma) * AeT^4, where P is the power radiated, (sigma) = 5.6696 * 10^-8 W/(m^2 * K^4), A is the surface area, e is the emissivity, and T is the temperature (in Kelvin). The emissivity can vary from 0 to 1 depending on the properties of the surface. An ideal absorber, which is also an ideal radiator, has an emissivity of 1 and is known as a black body. So, since an object can both radiate and absorb, its net power is P-net = (sigma) *Ae (T^4 - T-0 ^4) where T-0 is the temperature of the surroundings.
What this means is that your turkey is always going to be radiating a certain value depending on its temperature, but depending on where that turkey is (in the shade behind the spacecraft or in front of the spacecraft receiving radiation from the sun) it may cool down or heat up (if the suns radiation is enough to overcome the heat radiated away). If the turkey stays in one place it will come to equilibrium because eventually the radiation absorbed and radiation emitted will equal out whether or not it heated up or cooled down.
On one side note though, in the case where a turkey is in the radiation stream from the sun, because the radiation from the sun comes from only one direction, one side of the turkey would be much hotter than the other.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
I mean, either suit up and stick anything in the shadow of the ISS and it'll be cold pretty darn quick, or mount a metal box flush with any exposed bulkhead directly connected to the skin of the ISS on the shadowed side - you'll have a bloody cold little cupboard in no time.
I mean, it's not like it's rocket science. Well, wait...
-Styopa
I recently attended a talk by a NASA education guy on the subject of living in space - on the shuttle and ISS. For the most part, it's really not that different from what you might expect; the main problem is not so much things intrinsic to zero gravity (though there's some of that with liquids, crumbs, etc.) but that NASA generally skimps on the sort of amenities you might think the astronauts could use. For example, there was no "table" on ISS, until the crew up there built one out of some surplus supplies. And, similarly, no refrigerator or freezer. Things will be quite different once the first space hotel goes up.
Energy: time to change the picture.