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NASA Sells Space Food, Shuttle Tiles To Schools
iamrmani writes with word that NASA
"is offering processed space shuttle tiles and astronaut food to eligible schools and universities to preserve history. The lightweight space shuttle tiles protected the shuttles from extreme temperatures when the orbiters re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, while space food was precooked such that refrigeration is not required and is ready to eat or could be prepared simply by adding water or by heating." I wish NASA would finance future missions by selling interestingly packaged astronaut foods in general -- other than the ice cream, I've seen it only in museum displays.
I wish NASA would finance future missions by selling interestingly packaged astronaut foods in general
I suspect it probably costs more to produce than one could sell it for... and probably tastes like crap. Interested parties would buy it once for the novelty, then that would probably be it.
NASA is famous for paying $10,000 for a toilet seat. Can you imagine how much they pay for the food? Sure, it would be cool if they had it for sale - but I don't think they'll sell many meals if they are $1,000 each.
NASA has a bake sale!? What's next? Engineers on street corners with cups and signs that say "Please Give"?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In the hands of the right teacher this is the kind of thing that could get kids interested in science, provided the teacher gets a chance to talk about them during the 3 minutes per class time that isn't used to teach them how to pass whatever standardized test is next on the schedule.
while space food was precooked such that refrigeration is not required and is ready to eat or could be prepared simply by adding water or by heating.
We use some variation on this when we go mountain hiking, it's basically a dried meal just add boiling water. Carry a light alcohol burner and you can get a good hot meal for almost no weight. There's also full ration kits that include energy bars and lots of other portable foods, like 3800 kcal in 1 kg weight. There's not really much new to be gained there, except you probably get food better suited for space and less suited for earth. And oh yeah, it's all relative - it's an okay meal but it's not how you'd do it at home, this process naturally has its limitations.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why not have the astronauts consume gels similar to what athletes use?
NASA isn't so much _selling_ as donating the tiles and food to schools and universities, and asking that they pay the shipping.
... when I graduated. Aerospace department graduates had signs up that said "will build space shuttles for food."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Why not have the astronauts consume gels similar to what athletes use?
Complete lack of fiber intake causes various large intestinal issues after awhile. Also those gels are basically flavored HFCS, aren't they? Eating that much, they'd probably be dead from early onset diabetes before they land. Those gels are not very different from soda concentrate syrup, roughly equally healthy, and no one would eat them without massive ad budgets and sponsorship deals.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now that freeze dried food is more readily available (http://www.mountainhouse.com/) it isn't as much of a novelty anymore. I am surprised we don't see the heat shield tile technology more. Lining an oven with these might improve efficiency. They just need to work on manufacturing costs.
Those gels are like gatorade without all the water, not like food.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmmm been able to get space food for years at CyberCandi in Covent Garden
Keep these as reminders of a time when we still sent men into space, when the U.S. was a superpower, and when we thought we would always keep moving forward.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... NASA is ... offering processed space shuttle tiles ... to eligible schools
Is this a dupe from 1983? If I recall from decades ago, according to the asset tag at my middle school, that's when we got our shuttle tile. 83-something. Back then they did not have bar code or RFID tags, at least where I was.
Now the actual story might be that instead of fishing them out of the scrap and bump -n- dent barrel and giving them to schools, they're dumping out the surplus brand new theoretically usable spare parts instead.
Are there any schools without tiles? I think every school in our district had at least one shuttle tile since the 80s. You can do some pretty cool demos of insulation, picking them up by the corners while red hot, etc. Aerogels work even better but they're much more fragile.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The problem is some poorly thought out parts of the specs. An entire plane has to be certified to withstand a given blast and not be damaged and the QA requirements are probably crazy too. This includes the toilet seat.
AFAIK those gels are essentially calorie bombs because top athletes can burn close to 10000 kcal a day. Nice if you already have all your dietary needs covered and just need more energy, but pointless for astronauts - and everybody else, really. For average people it's about as healthy as supersize meals.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It seems to me that ordering processed astronaut food is a really crappy idea...
I'll pass on this one... (since the astronauts already did....)
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Maybe I am getting old, but I can remember when they just fell out of the sky, for free :-)
But couldn't gels be a healthy protein/carb mix or whatever the body needs for a 2 week trip?
It's link spam. Does Slashdot have a way to actually delete the comment, not just mod it -1 Troll?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Knowing the dehydrated food I have tried, I hope they clearly label the two. Don't want the kids gnawing on the tiles.
The ice cream was awesome, because we were kids, and it was ice cream from outer space! But basically, yeah, it's just camping food. The Russians also got vodka, but I guess they won't be giving that to US school kids.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I just had a brilliant idea.
It is well known that spacefood is easy to conserve and tastes like crap. So why don't we make better use of those qualities? There's quite a few places in the world with lack of food, and usually those recieve aid in the form of grain and stuff. The problem is they might become dependant on those supplies and neglect to grow their own crops.
Why don't we send spacefood to these famine stricken places? The fact that it tastes like crap will give them incentive to produce their own food, and no one will starve in the meantime. Spacefood shouldn't be so expensive if it's mass produced right? It might even be cheaper if you consider that you no longer need to send regular food aid as they'll soon solve the problem themselves.
The alternative our current aid programmes. We know how those work out. Another alternative is to just let them starve, which might solve a few other problems, but is morally inconvenient.
Wow. I'm waaaayyy offtopic today.
Producing a foodstuff like that which was still a gel composition would be hard. Dietary needs are complex and to keep the food as a gel would mean leaving things out.
There's a place for iron rations, like pemmican, but they are no substitute for a varied diet.
Aside from the purely nutritional aspect, the psychological aspects are also important, especially on an arduous mission in a dangerous and confined environment. Each astronaut has an input into what goes on his menu because this is recognised as important for preserving their morale. Even the Matrix gets this right - you don't want to be eating the same "bowl of snot" for every meal, even if it is nutritionally complete.
You seem to probably be making an elementary mistake. If you *sell* the food for $1, you are almost surely not *making* a dollar.
The food costs something to grow, harvest, ship to the processing center to be turned into 'space food', the processing costs money, then it has to be packaged, shipped, then there needs to be some sort of retail or wholesale seller who actually distributes the product. So, there's a lot of hands in the cookie jar.
It's hard to say if the costs would be less than $1 or not, but it's definitely not zero, so selling these packages for a $1 each would not generate $1 which could be put towards NASA's budget (I'm guessing NASA would be lucky to get 25 cents).
The funny thing about the freeze-dried ice cream they sell at the Air & Space Museum and other places is that astronauts apparently don't like it... It went to outer space maybe once on Apollo 7 in 1968, and NASA hasn't packed it since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-dried_ice_cream
I do like it too, though, so at least there's more of it to go around for people like us (just wish there was a cheaper way to buy it than from tourist traps).
Hopefully NASA sends a few hardhat to each school/university that receives a heat tile to protect onlookers from debris...those tiles have a great reputation.
As a blacksmith, I just with they'd sell the tiles. I could make a gas forge that would Rock with those!
When I was young, I visited my sister, who trains astronauts at NASA, and an astronaut gave me some of their food - a packet of cocoa, creamed spinach, and a brownie. The cocoa is pretty normal - powder in a silver bag. The spinach looks absolutely disgusting, even more so than spinach usually does, from the plastic crinkled around its odd texture when it was vacuum sealed. And the brownie is one of the rare foods that wasn't freeze dried; just sealed.
It was pretty cool getting the insider's tour; we'd see the official tours go by, two floors up in a glass-sided hallway. But we'd be down on the floor, looking at everything close-up. I even got to try one of their simulators briefly (I think playing with the fake robotic arm), and sat in the back seat while a couple astronauts trained in a different simulator.
Please, don't say the dark side of the moon. The "Dark Side" gets the same amount of sun light that the "Light Side" gets, about 14 earth days worth if I remember correctly. The correct term should be "The back side of the moon", or possibly "The far side of the moon".
I know it's probably not a big deal, but really, there can be moon nazis too... right?
Pillsbury already passed this stuff off on unsuspecting kids in the 1960's-70's.
Had a few myself whilst in Iraq. Pretty good eats.
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
I want a tile made into a beer mug! Maybe another one as a scotch glass too. Icy cold to the last drop.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
"I wish NASA would finance future missions by selling interestingly packaged astronaut foods in general -- other than the ice cream, I've seen it only in museum displays."
So what you are saying is that You would like NASA to have a bake sale to fund it's projects..... That's going to piss of the girl scouts when both are standing at your door..
Hmmmmm. Freeze dried ice cream or thin mints... You decide.....
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
I had real Space Food, in the 70's. It was a real product, a lot like pocky.