How to keep astronauts fed and happy

Daniel and Kelly discuss the often less-than-delicious history of food in space. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Food is really really important to humans, and not just
as a way to keep these squishy machines of ours running.
Our religions have rules about the kinds of foods we
can eat and when we can eat them. We use
comfort foods to relax, and we break bread with the
people that we hold deer. But bringing food with us

(00:27):
when we travel far from home to explore remote environments
is really hard. Before we were sending astronauts to space,
humans were sailing the open seas and exploring Earth's frozen poles,
and initially we didn't have the whole food thing figured
out really well. During the Age of Sale, which ran
from like fifteen seventy to eighteen sixty ish, a disease

(00:50):
called scurvy was a huge problem. We didn't really understand
at the time that our bodies needed vitamin C and
that vitamin C came from fresh stuff like fruits and vegetables.
I've seen reports that two million sailors died of scurvy
during this time, and that number seems kind of hard
to believe, but I guess it's over three hundred years

(01:11):
and there were loads of people sailing at the time.
But this is a horrible way to die without vitamin C.
Your connective tissues degenerate, your gums start to bleed, Your
teeth wobble and fall out. Wounds that it healed a
long time ago, like magically reopen and start bleeding again.

(01:31):
You get lethargic, you get weakness, and it's a slow,
miserable death. But eventually we figured out that humans need
vitamin C, and vitamin C comes from fresh stuff. But
even when you have the right foods, it can be
hard to pack the foods right. During the Franklin Expedition,
which was a British expedition that left in eighteen forty
five to explore the Arctic, there was lead lining in

(01:53):
the cans that stored their food and that appears to
have given some of the crew lead poisoning. And even
when you do figure out how to pack the food
in a way that doesn't kill the crew, often the
food is not super tasty because shelf stable food is
just not always super delicious. So a common staple on
polar expeditions was called pemmican, and this super shelf stable

(02:16):
food was made out of animal fat mixed with dried
meat and dried berries. And yes, it's exceptionally shelf stable,
so nice to pack on long expeditions far from the
grocery store, but it is not exceptionally delicious. Complaints about
Pemmican include that it stops you up, which sounds rather unpleasant,

(02:37):
It tastes awful, and it generally leaves the consumer greasy.
So like that animal fat gets on your clothes, it
gets in your hair, and like in an environment where
it's really hard to take a good shower, that grease
kind of builds up over time and is a very unpleasant.
But tasty food is so important on difficult journeys on
polar expeditions, they see special foods like holidays as a

(03:01):
morale boost and has ways to keep people going. The
best stuff was saved for like Christmas dinners, so that
they could all look forward to that and celebrate, And
if morale was getting low, they would make up a
holiday and pull out the chocolate that they had stored
for special occasions to try to perk everybody up and
keep them going. So, as you may know, I'm really
interested in what life is going to be like as

(03:21):
we set out to settle Mars, and so I've thought
a fair bit about what food has been like so
far in space, and what food might be like when
we finally moved to Mars. You know, how are we
going to grow it, how are we going to make it,
How are we going to make sure we have enough
and that it's delicious. But Mars is going to have
its own challenges that are unique to human history that

(03:43):
we haven't really experienced yet. So, for example, on polar expeditions,
when food ran low, there was often a chance that
you could kill a polar bear or a penguin or
some fish or a turtle and you know, extend your
food supply in that way. And sadly, it was also
pretty common to kill the dogs that were pulling the
sleighs when you ran out of food, so that you
could eat them as well. But unless there are some

(04:05):
massive surprises on Mars, there's not going to be Martian
polar bears that we can use as back up when
we get up there. So this is the first of
a two part series on food in space. First, we're
going to explore the history of food in space and
some of the challenges that had to be overcome to
get shelf stable food to be safe and delicious for
our astronauts, and then in episode two, we're going to

(04:27):
take a look at the future of food in space
and what farmers might be up to when we finally
settle Mars. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm pretty
persnickety about what I eat.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
I'm Kelly Wainer Smith. I study parasites, and I I
love food, and if you ask me ahead of time,
I will try to not talk about the parasites that
are in your food. If you take me out to dinner.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
All right, Kelly, We'll have a really important question for
you that might shape the entire future of our friendship.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Oh oh, high steaks.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
All right, it's high steaks. Yes. How do you feel
about dark chocolate versus white chocolate? Think carefully?

Speaker 3 (05:21):
So.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
When I was a kid, I hated white chocolate, but
as an adult my tastes of matured. I still prefer
dark chocolate, but I like white chocolate too. All right,
are we still good? Or is it over for our friendship?

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Now? Borderline? Borderline, you threw a bone too dark chocolate there,
But I will not even admit white chocolate into the
category of chocolate. I will admit it can be tasty
in moments, but to me it doesn't belong in the
same sentence as actual chocolate.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Is it made from cocal beans or is there something
about white chocolate that I don't know?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
It's only the butter. It has no actual cocoa in it.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
M I mean, I don't get too worked up about
terminology and jargon. I just know what delicious and what's not.
But sure, I'll go with it, white chocolate. I'm kicking
you to the curb. It's just okay.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
And Welcome to the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe,
in which we talk about everything that's tasty and amazing
and wonderful in this universe. We take a big bite
out of it and try to make it all digestible
to you. Everything from the tiniest little particles to the
biggest planets and the swirling galaxies of this incredible, extraordinary
universe delicious.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Well. On today's show, we are talking about food in space,
which I spent so much time reading about when we
were working on a city on Mars. And there are
so many fun stories about food that's gone to space
that some people love and some people hate that. I
was like, Daniel, let's start doing two part episodes because
I have so much to say about food. And you're like, fine,

(06:52):
I'll let you talk about food, but we like to
hear what other people have to say about food too.
So you went out to the campus of uc IRVA
and accosted people with your microphone and ask them questions
about food and space.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
That's right, I asked folks, what were the big challenges
to keeping astronauts fed. If you would like to contribute
to answers for the podcast, please write to us to
questions at danieland Kelly dot org. We'd love to hear
your voice and include your answers in this segment of
the podcast.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
When you send us an email, just say hey, I
want to give you my opinion on stuff, and we'll
send you the question that we're working on at the moment,
and you'll just send us an audio file with your answer.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Easy, pasy, and then you can impressed all of your
friends by having your voice on our podcast.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Whop.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
All right, let's hear what we came up with this week.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Probably getting the food up there, I would imagine, I
think every pound of material that you bring up costs
an enormous amount of money. Well, I was supposed that
under different gravitational circumstances you need to take care of
your muscles and tub bones in such a way that

(08:00):
when you get back to Earth things might feel heavier
and you're used to them feeling likely in most pay station,
for instance. Yeah, I think we can probably engineer our
way through it, but we just need that. I mean,
you have sunlight, fiber, fiber Okay, Oh.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
That's a good line.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I think I agree with fiber. Well, all right, keeping
the food from not perishing like bacteria. It's world. You
need a lot of it and it can't go bad.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, can you have a fridge and space? Oh?

Speaker 3 (08:31):
What helps?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I mean, our society has gotten so good at processed
food that we've got tons of stuff that's like shelf
stable for decades.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
So that's not the issue.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
I'm sure we'll have plenty of ways to make food.
We'll have to really make sure that there's good vitamins
in there and fiber and so forth. But I guess
the real problem will be.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Just the boredom.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Like it will be hard for the astronauts to live
that way for so long, and man just what they
would do for a well Daniel, These were some good answers.
What do you think is the major challenge for keeping
astronauts fed?

Speaker 2 (09:06):
I agree with the answers that are concerned about boredom,
because you know, food is important, so I look forward
to dinner. You know. Maybe that's because I only eat
one meal a day, But when I sit down to
eat that meal, I'm like, hmmm, I'm gonna enjoy this.
And so if you're working hard, you're out there in space,
and space is like not always that comfortable or forgiving,
then you got to make sure your meals are something

(09:26):
you can enjoy.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, I think our friendship's on the line again. You
eat one meal a day? Are you like my husband
who's like, oh, I forgot to have breakfast? And I'm like,
people write you and tell you how smart you are.
How did you forget to have breakfast? You only eat
at dinner?

Speaker 2 (09:41):
No, I don't know if this makes me dumber or
smarter than your husband, but I only eat when the
sun goes down. I'm on the vampire diet.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Why I don't understand. I love the act of chewing
on food so much I couldn't only do it after
the sun goes down. Why only after the sun goes down.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
It's not because I'm actually a Vampire's good, don't worry
about it.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Your curtain's open behind you. You'd be a guy.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
But breakfast and lunch, I feel like the interfere with
the flow of the day. You know, this way, I
have a whole day. The rest of humanity has to
like pack food and take it with them. It's a hassle.
Everybody's like spending hours in the morning preparing their lunch
and bring it with them. Oh, it's spilled in my backpack,
and now I got to take a break. I just
have like a nice whole day, and then at the
end of it, I get a meal. It's wonderful. You
look totally dumbfound it over there.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I don't know how to process this, but you know,
I went through a similar thought process when I was younger,
trying to decide if I was going to learn how
to do makeup and then spend time putting it on
every day. And I was like, well, by the time
I'm like ninety, that would have taken like one and
a half years of my life, and I just don't
think it's worth it. So I'm not going to do it,
but I just can't imagine making that same decision about food.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, you know, eating at home is the best because
then you get to prepare the food the way you
like it, you have all of your ingredients. This is
one reason that like airplane food has always been terrible, right,
because it's got to be stored and transported. Eating lunch,
when you're bringing your food with you or you got
to find some restaurant or something, it's a big hassle
and it's never as good is something you could have
at home. So I try to save that up and

(11:03):
enjoy it at home. That's similar to the challenge of
today's episode, right, how do you prepare food, bring it
to space, keep it healthy, keep it fresh, keep it
good for the astronauts.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, so actually, when we first started going to space,
it was moderately easy, so the missions were short. The
very first trip to space, when Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin went
up in nineteen sixty one, most of the cosmonauts were
already fighter pilots and there was already food figured out
for fighter pilots. So just like cosmonauts, they go up
there in these like pressureized suits with these awkward helmets,

(11:34):
and there's all this stuff they need to pay attention to.
So you can't be like opening up something complicated and
applying catch up. It needs to be something that you
get the calories in there as fast as you can.
And so for fighter pilots, they had already figured out
these like toothpaste shaped tubes.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Uh, so it was bad. You're telling me the first
space food was as bad as fighter pilot food, which
sounds terrible.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, it was bad. The first foods eaten in space
were a tube of meat, maybe two tubes of meat,
followed by a tube of chocolate for dessert, So pretty gross.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Was that the first food eaten by humans? Or did
they send up any food with a monkey or with
the dog that they sent into space?

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, Soleika and Bilka and Stroka, those were dogs that
were sent up to space. They were sent up with food.
I think the food was in a jelly sort of
thing to kind of hold everything together so that it
wouldn't float apart. So also kibbles and gelatin.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I guarantee those dogs ate that thing up before the
thing even got off the ground.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, because dogs are gross. I don't think they had
any trouble getting them to eat their food. But yeah,
so you're right. First food that humans ate in space
Eureka Garon. He seemed like he was a pretty like chill,
easygoing guy. He was happy with the food, he was
happy with the flight. Life was great. The next guy
who went up, GERMANTITV, he threw up, and you know,

(12:50):
he was also great, but he puked. That is the
first case of a human getting space adaptation sickness.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Oh wait, what is space adaptation sickness? Is that just like, hey,
tube of food is not really food or is it
something to do with actually being out in space.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, it's something to do with actually being out in space.
So part of how we have our sense of balance
is that our ears have like some fluid in them
and some hairs. Based on what the fluids are doing
to those hairs, that kind of tells us how our
body is oriented. And you know, we just have various
ways that our body uses to figure out like where
we are and what we're doing that depend on gravity.
And so we don't actually understand space adaptation sickness super well,

(13:28):
but we know that when you go up in space
sometimes it turns your stomach. Some people are fine. Some
people are very much not fine, and they puke, and
some people get over it fast. Some people take a
few days. On Skylab, they didn't want to admit that
one of the guys puked, and so he puked and
then he threw it away, and they tried to pretend
it didn't happen, and then they got caught. They recorded

(13:50):
their conversation because everything in space is recorded. But anyway,
so it's a bit of a point of pride if
you go to space and you don't yack. But I
think a lot of people do yack that in on
the parabolic flat.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, I feel bad for Cosmo on Titav because he
is a first in human history. Right, he's the first
person to yack in space, but nobody knows his name.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
It's hard being second. I think buzz Aldrin was really
mad that Neil Armstrong was going to go out first,
because he knew that the first person to go out,
you're gonna remember that person's name before you remember the
second person's name.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, but Titov was the first to do something, at
least right the first space. He act like that's a thing, right,
that should be in the book.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Yeah, but you know, not all firsts need to go
down in history, like I'm the first wienersmith because my
paperwork got processed first, but no one cares. Not all
first needs to be celebrated. But so that things got
better pretty quick. So like those tubes, as you noted,
it's kind of gross and not like satisfying and fun
to eat pastes from a tube. And so during Gemini

(14:45):
and Apollo, they were going to be on there for longer,
so they were trying to figure out some options that
would be more exciting. But there's a lot of problems
to solve. So like, okay, if you're gonna send astronauts
to the Moon, they've got enough stuff to worry about
without getting like food sickness, and so you need to
make sure that the fo to sterile and it's not
going to give them food poisoning. Is they already worried about
space adaptation sickness? You don't refrigerators or freezers or stoves,

(15:09):
at least not on Apollo or Gemini. Iss now has
a freezer, they got one in twenty twenty, but those
things are energetically expensive and heavy. You also need to
make the food light, so on Apollo, they freeze dried
a bunch of stuff, so essentially, you like you freeze
it and then you heat it up in a vacuum
to try to get all the water out, and now
it weighs less. And the fuel cells on Apollo produced

(15:31):
water as sort of a byproduct of the process where
they were making power, and you'd use that water to
rehydrate your food. Apparently it had a little bit of
a funky taste, which is an ideal, but it saved
on mass.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
But is it a challenge to make shelf sable food
that's going to be good for days or weeks. One
of our listener comments was noting that we are pretty
good at making processed food these days.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, we're pretty good at making processed food, but a
lot of that processed food isn't lasgna that's good for
nine months, two weeks, so like the longest trip to
the Moon, it was like two or three weeks or something.
So we're pretty good. And actually they worked with Pillsbury
because Pillsbury makes shelf stable foods, and so they created
some shelf stable foods for the Apollo program. So yeah,

(16:13):
it's not too hard to make it for a couple
of weeks. When you get to the iss era and
when you start to think about Mars, it gets way
more complicated. But during the Apollo era it was pretty straightforward.
So they did a lot of this freeze drying, or
they do like what's called intermediate moisture foods, which are
essentially like Eminem's. They've got some moisture in them, but
there's shelf stable. So we're gonna send those man.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Food chemists have the grossest names for things, you know,
intermediate moisture foods. That does not sound like something I
want to eat at all.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
No, you feel like you should match them up with
like chefs or something, and like everything should be named
something that could go on a menu. Well, and since
I'm a biologist and we managed to make it almost
fifteen minutes into the episode, it's time to talk about poop,
all right. So the Apollo and the Gemini capsules were
really small, Like imagine being in a van with like
two or three people and there's no cordoned off spaces

(17:01):
where you can get privacy, right, Yeah, And so when
you need toop, you need to just be like, turn around, guys,
here it comes. And I'm sure they can smell it
into small space. And so the foods they tried to
make the foods quote low residue, which essentially means not
a lot of fiber. And there were actually some astronauts
who would try to go their whole mission without pooping.

(17:25):
Pooping was not just embarrassing, but like unpleasant. So they
had these little baggies with an adhesive at the top
that you would use the adhesive to stick to your heinie.
Sorry about all the hand motions that you can see
that no one else can save.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Because it sounds like you're implying that gravity is an
important part of this human process. Yeah, yep, and so
that it's substantially different when you're out there floating. The
stuff doesn't just get squeezed out. You're saying like it's
got to get pulled out, Like every time I'm sitting
on the toilet. You're saying, the Earth is doing a
significant amount of work on me.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Yes, you should thank the Earth every morning or whenever,
I know, we're all very regular, whatever, you should say,
thank you Earth for assisting me in this process to partnership.
That's right, right, So, because things don't go in the direction,
it's supposed to. There's a finger cut in the bag
to help you push things in the right direction.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Okay, Oh, nobody wants to see that hand gesture of
the I'm so.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Sorry, Daniel, I can't help it. So anyway, it's gross.
So Frank Borman, he was supposed to spend two weeks
orbiting the Earth with Jim Level, and he made it
eight days. Maybe it was nine days. He was going
to try to not poop at all, and at one point,
I guess he turned to Jim Level and said, well,
this is it, Jim, And Jim was like, you got
five days left. But anyway, he couldn't make it.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Well, let me ask you, as a biologist, how long
can the human go without producing number two and still
be healthy? I mean, eight days does not sound healthy.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
No, it does not sound healthy. I don't know. There
aren't consequences like I've heard of people passing out. I've
visited the Motor Museum in Philadelphia and got my picture
taken next to the mega colon, which was the colon
from someone who just was not regular enough. But anyway,
I don't know the answer exactly, but you should not
eat too many low residue foods.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Well, according to my rapid googling, the record is forty
five days, but you don't get a trophy.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
They now that's another first that history is not going
to remember apparently. H So we've talked a bit about
the kinds of foods that they came up with, so
you'd freeze dry. For the Gemini missions, all they had
to rehydrate the food was cold water, and it was
considered this like huge upgrade in the Apollo mission when
you could rehydrate your food and it was a little

(19:29):
bit warm, and so like imagine eating rehydrated sort of
lukewarm food for two weeks. Not fun.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
And so we're back in the sixties still, right, What
kind of technology do we have now that they didn't
have then, Like they had microwaves in the sixties.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
I don't know if they had microwaves in the sixties,
but I don't think they have microwaves on the ISS
now even I think they use like a little convection
oven that heats things up, but not even that much.
And then they also have another hot water nozzle to
rehydrate their food. Because these freeze dried foods are still
going to space.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I guess that makes sense. If you're pulling most
of the water out of this, then a microwave is
not going to work on it, because a microwave mostly
heats the water in the food because the resonance of
those electromagnetic waves excites the water molecules. So if you
put something dry into a microwave, it doesn't really get
heated up very effectively. Microwaves were invented in the sixties.
I think they were commercially available in the mid sixties.
But then it doesn't make sense to include them in

(20:25):
space anyway.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Good time for humanity. I like microwaves. One of the
other things that they had were these cubes that were
like covered in like an oil. So you don't want
crumbs in space. You know, everything floats when you're in space,
and so if you've got crumbs, they can like get
into the electrical equipment and they can cause shorts. And
John Young got into a ton of trouble because he
snuck a corn beef sandwich onto one of his flights.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
How do you sneak a corn beef sandwich? Like, do
I want to ask where he was hiding it.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
I don't know where he snuck his in particular, but
I do know that a board mirror. The cosmouts have
a tradition where when they're on their way out for launch,
they get out of the van that's bringing them to
bike a ore where the rockets are going to take off,
and they pee on the tire. Because that's what ury
Gagaron did because it was like his last chance to
like take off the spacesuit. And so that is supposed

(21:15):
to be a time when people sort of squirrel away
items that they're maybe not supposed to have, but they
want to take on anyway. So little bottles of liquor
have been brought on to the International Space Station by
storing them in your spacesuit when you like go out
to take your pee.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Somebody slip to a corny I don't understand how this works.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
I don't know either. He got in a lot of trouble,
Like literally there was a congressional hearing because if the
crumbs from his sandwich had messed up that mission. Can
you imagine how much taxpayer money would have been flushed
down the toilet.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
The most expensive corn beef sandwich in.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
History exactly, yes, right right, And this was part of
the Cold War. Can you imagine if we had lost
the Cold War over a corn beef sandwich. Anyway, Steaks
were high.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Steaks were high.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Now, Oh, I did all that was so great and
I didn't even know I was doing it.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Literally, corn beef sandwich in space is stas or high.
That pun works in so many levels.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I'm so clever and I don't even know it. All right,
But you know what, So I think we should leave
the audience on tender hooks for a second. We are
going to do a little bit of myth busting about
food and space when we get back from the commercials.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
So finish that corn beef sandwich, everybody. You are going
to launch into a new era of understanding.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Amazing, all right, So, Daniel, how many times do you
think that freeze dried astronaut ice cream that gets sold

(22:50):
at all of the air and space museums. How many
times has that gone to space?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Oh? Man? I mean, I imagine you want to send
something yummy with the astronauts, and you want to send
something light. I don't know why you wouldn't send it
every single time. I'm gonna guess every single time they
go to space they get ice cream. They deserve it.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
I think you're probably playing along with me. But that's great.
I love it. It's never gone to space. No, I'm
in one. It's awful, like only not smart children, but
it Have you ever opened up those bags? Like it's
all little particles that sort of go floating out and
make a giant mess. I mean, like even in gravity,
those things make a gigantic mess.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I loved astronaut ice cream. I can't believe you're down
on it. Every time we went to the planetarium or whatever,
I got astronaut ice cream. It was such a treat
and like, okay, it's not as good as real ice cream,
but it made me feel like an astronaut.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
I did not realize how much conflicts this food episode
was going to cause between the two of us. I
hate that stuff, but fine, good for you. A dairy
based food cube has flown. Oh but not this freeze
dried ice cream.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
So what's the origin of it? Is it just all marketing?

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah? Worked on you.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
It actually did work. I mean not only did I
buy it, but I enjoyed it more because I believed
it had been in space. So yeah, it absolutely worked.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
All right, Well, great, there's a market for everything, all right?

Speaker 2 (24:12):
All right, Well, what about tang. Are you gonna tell
me the tang was never enjoyed by astronauts?

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Well, I mean maybe it was enjoyed by astronauts, but
it wasn't made for astronauts. Often when I'm giving talks
about space and I go into my like negative Nelly
speech about you know, people say we should go to
space for this reason, but that's a bad reason. People
will always say, but like, oh, but what about all
the spinoff technologies, like we wouldn't have tang if it
wasn't for space. I can't tell you how many times
I've heard this.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
That's their go to, not like velcro, tephlin, no minaturization
or anything teflon.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
He I think, has you know, captured the popular.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Consciousness the power of marketing?

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yes? Amen. So Tang was made by a food scientist
named William Mitchell. Everybody should know this guy's name if
you grew up in the nineties. So he also came
up with cool whip, which was like a staple in
my house in the nineties, which like instant nostalgia there
they still exist somehow, and instant jello.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Wow, this guy should get the Nobel Prize.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
For Food Science, or he should get punished in some
way because like adult Kelly dislikes all of those food items.
But anyway, I mentioned that they get their water from
those fuel cells and they have a kind of like, uh,
not great taste. So tang was a like easy way
you could get the packets and sort of hook them
up to the waterline or whatever and then mix it
up and then it would kind of cover up the
taste from the fuel cells. And some of the astronauts

(25:31):
loved it, some of them hated it. In fact, buzz Aldron,
in a nineteen eighty eight interview on NPR said tang sucks.
If you go to some bars, you can get a
drink called the buzz Aldron that has tang in it.
And I don't know if that was meant as like
an insult to buzz or what.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
So you're saying tang was popular among astronauts because it
tasted better than like machine water.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yes, and even then not all of them liked it.
But again, I loved tang when I was a kid too.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
All right, but this is not really food for space, right,
this is food connected to space through the genius of marketing.
Let's get back to talking about how we actually feed
astronauts in space. You took us through the sixties and
seventies when it was basically like an extended version of
fighter pilot goo. What about like in the seventies and eighties,
when we started spending more time in space, what did

(26:19):
the food industry wizards whip up for those astronauts.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Well, so the seventies and the eighties is when we
started sending up space stations and people were staying up
there for weeks and then months, and now we're up
to years or I think the longest day was four
hundred and thirty seven days. They don't have to bring
all of the food with them at once. There's resupply
ships that can come, and when those resupply ships come,
they bring fresh food, and it's like hugely popular. But

(26:43):
we're still doing freeze dried foods. We're still doing intermediate
moisture foods. But there's just like a lot more options now.
So on the International Space Station, and this is jumping
ahead in time a bit. There's over two hundred options
now and so a lot of them, Like on the
cosmonaut side, it's like cans of jelly fish. On the
US side, Oh, there's a shrimp cocktail I think is

(27:05):
very popular. I'm not personally a shrimp person myself. Any
animal that you need to deepoop before you eat it
is not on my plate personally.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Also, I try it to eat shrimp and others shell
foods if some very far from the shore. And I
feel like up in space definitely qualifies as like really
not near.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, not near it at all. Agreed. Agreed. So when
the US sent up Skylub in nineteen seventy three, that
was like maybe the height of dining in space. So
they sent up a freezer and a fridge, and I
think that we have a fridge, but not a freezer
on the ISS, although maybe we have a fridge for

(27:41):
like scientific supplies. And I've heard that every once in
a while food ends up in the science freezers on
the ISS, which is a big no no on Earth.
But you know, you do what you got to do
in space.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
You know. In my house, like at home, my wife
is a biologist, so of course we have science stuff
in our freezer, including unmentionables from various members to the family.
So she's like, don't open those brown paper bags unless
you really want to see something you don't want to see.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Oh, man, I know I.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Keep objecting to that. I'm like, look at in your lab.
You have a food freezer and a science freezer. Why
can't we just make this a food freezer.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Oh I cannot wait to tell that to my husband
because he's always like, you have infected fish brains in
our freezer? Or what is this dead bird doing in
the freezer? But we've never had bags of feces in
our freezer. And I feel like Zach doesn't appreciate me
as much as he should. But you know what I
thought was fun on the cosmonauts of boards Salute one,

(28:35):
which was the first base station to ever go up.
Apparently they had first breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
So you would say, they're wasting three meals worth of time, guys,
Whereas I like them even more knowing this, Although it
didn't the Lord of the Rings. Didn't the Hobbits have
first breakfast and second breakfast anyway?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, very likely, And Hommits are not famous Lord of
the Rings for being like very effective or getting stuff done.
You know, they spent most of their time cooking meals
and cleaning up after meals. It was a whole day,
you know, first breakfast, second breakfast eleven z's like two z's.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
I mean, that was kind of the point they save
the world, you monster, Ah, a lot.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Of people died before they saved the world. If they
just skipped breakfast, you know, they could have saved a
whole lot of people from the agony.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Maybe they wouldn't have had enough energy, Daniel, I'm getting
choked up just thinking about it. My voice caught. So
I was reading, you know a lot of stories about
what cosmonauts in space have been eating over the years,
and one of the things they really love for fresh
food that I read over and over again is onions.
And in fact, the first birthday in space, it was

(29:45):
Victor Pitsev's thirty eighth birthday aboard Salute one. They celebrated
with an onion and a lemon that had been smuggled
on board for that particular occasion, and they all like
bit into it and we're particularly excited about it, like.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
A raw, fresh onion.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
As far as I can tell, that's what happened.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Man, Your standards must really plummet if you spend a
little bit of time in space, if you're like an
onion is a.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Delicacy, or if you live in the Soviet Union, and
things were I think it was even worse in the nineties.
But I don't think things were great then, but I
guess then it was Russia.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
But it sounds like there's a big step up from
the sixties to the seventies when we have like space
stations and now we have options and different kinds of
food and all sorts of stuff. What exactly was it
that enabled that? Was it the freezers and the heaters
on board, or is just having more time and space
meant people had to devote more energy to making the
food actually good for the astronauts.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah. I think if you're going to have a program
where people are going to be up there for months,
then you're just kind of forced to do better and
you're forced to make sure that your foods last longer.
And they experimented with refrigerators and the trade offs between
how much energy and space they take, and so yeah,
I think it was just the need to make things
last longer. So, like we start using the Space Shuttle
in nineteen eighty one, it sticks around for like twenty

(30:57):
thirty something years, but those missions like two to three weeks,
and so they sometimes used military meals that were called
MREs or meals ready to eat, and so it's like, well,
why reinvent the wheel if we've got something that can
already work. So if you're only going up for a
couple weeks, you don't have to be fancy. Although those
MRIs were apparently awful. I talked to someone who said

(31:18):
that they're known as meals rarely edible or meals requiring
enemas because of their low fiber content. So here we
are again.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
But if you're going to be up there in space
for a long time, can't you grow some food? I mean,
if we have like a basically a permanent space colony,
we have a space station, it's up there all the time,
is it feasible to have a little bit of a
garden and grow some fresh food?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, And there have been some experiments. I think there's
an experiment called veggie, and I can't remember if that's
like a tortured acronym of some sort or they just
decided to call it veggie. But so, like, one of
the problems with growing food in space is that, like
water tends to form like bubbles, and because of surface tension,
it kind of sticks together, and so when you're trying
to get roots that grow out to like have a

(32:04):
lot of surface area connections between the waters and the
nutrients and stuff, it can be hard because the water
tends to sort of like ball up in one spot
and it's not necessarily interacting with the roots the way
you want it to. And so they've had to figure
out some various ways to like you know, get the lighting,
get the water, get the nutrients. But they have been
able to grow food in space. To go back to

(32:25):
the onions on Solute six, there was an experiment with
onions that they were supposed to do, and the cosmonauts
pretended the onions got lost so that they could eat
them themselves, so they ate them. But we've grown I think,
like mustard greens, maybe kale mazuka. There have been greens
that have been grown in space and consumed in space,
and apparently the act of growing these plants is like

(32:48):
a huge mental health improvement for the people who tend them,
like I guess they you know, being near living things.
As a biologist, this isn't surprising to me, but being
near living things is just like really great for mental health.
But the shuttle is when we got some pretty cool
food advances. So the Shuttle is the first time. So,
like I love carbs, you probably don't even eat carbs

(33:09):
for whatever.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
No, No, I love carbs. I'm pro carb, one hundred
percent pro.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Cos I'm glad we're finding some common ground we can
agree on. Bread has a bunch of crumbs, and crumbs
are a problem.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Crumbs are not a problem for me.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
I love crumbs, but you wouldn't want them in your equipment.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
No. This is one reason why I'm not a fighter
pilot or an astronaut, because I'm pro crumb.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Okay, So there was a shuttle flight where we had
the first Mexican astronaut. This was payload specialist Rudolpha Vella,
and he was up there with astronaut Mary Cleeve, and
they had suggested, what if you bring tortillas up because
tortillas are like edible plates that don't have a lot
of crumbs. And after that point, tortillas are like a

(33:52):
staple in space now like almost everything is eaten on
top of a tortilla in space. And for a while
they were using Taco Bell tortillas because Tago Bell makes
tortillas that are shelf stable for nine months knowing it's
shelf stable that long, you're like, oh, it's not food,
is it? What is that? Actually?

Speaker 2 (34:10):
No, the food science is probably a name for it.
You know, it's like a flattened circular food product or whatever.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah. Yeah, But the Russians they're not so into tortillas. Instead,
they've made these tiny, little bite sized breads that don't
shed a lot of crumbs. And I guess they're so
tiny that they're called Barbie breads because you can imagine
like a little Barbie using one in her little dream house.
But you know, one of the interesting things about space
is that, like, okay, so we've talked about all these

(34:35):
freeze dried foods and foods in cans that frankly don't
sound particularly delicious to me. But it seems, for reasons
we don't totally understand, to be hard to actually taste
things in space. And there's a couple different explanations for this,
but astronauts regularly complain that like food is way less flavorful.
One of the ideas is that you're up in space,

(34:55):
you're in free fall, your fluids are sort of moving
up towards your head, and if you've ever been congested
or had like a sinus infection, and that it's all congested,
maybe you notice that food tastes less flavorful at that point. So,
like a lot of flavor isn't just about our taste buds.
It's about the act of like smelling the food that
we're eating also, So if you're all like congested, you're

(35:17):
losing the smell parts that brings us such joy when
we eat. But then another idea is that like a
lot of that food is like in a bag that
you added water to, so you can't really smell it anyway, right,
because you're just like drinking it through a straw at
the beginning. So they don't really know why food tastes
less flavorful, but many astronauts report.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
This seems like they should invent something where there's like
a tube that goes to your mouth and another one
that goes to your nose so you can like simultaneously
smell it and eat. It seems like the kind of
thing NASA would come up with, right, come on, engineers,
get with the programs.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, they're not working on the important questions, are they. No.
I was at a restaurant once and I was watching
a woman she was like talking to someone, and she
went to bring her cup with a straw in it
up to her mouth, but she wasn't paying attention to
the straw went up her nose and like shoved her
head back, and then she looked around to see if
anyone had seen, and then she saw I was kind
of chuckling, and I was like.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Maybe it's okay, You're like, don't worry. I'm a biologist.
I'm just observing you.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
That's right, that's right. So I'm not sure that I
would want a straw in my nose, I guess, is
what I'm saying. It's a weird, awkward, embarrassing situation.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Well, I wouldn't want to eat cardboard for every single meal.
I mean, I think if you're not tasting your food,
then like why are you even eating it?

Speaker 1 (36:27):
So they try to get around this, like they've had
celebrity chefs create extra flavorful meals, and then things like
taco sauce packets are so popular that on one flight
they were actually like used as currency. So you'd be like,
all right, I don't want to clean the toilets today,
so I will pay you three taco sauce packets if
you clean the toilet.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
This like a prison economy. Just see what life is
like up there. You know, it's like I'm trading like
two packets of cigarettes and a minute on the fatone.
You know this is crazy.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Well, and the bar is so low. Like Shannon Lucid,
so she was on Mirror, which was a Soviet Russian
space station. She lost a shoe once and she couldn't
find it, like space stations are notoriously cluttered and hard
to find things, So she offered the guy on the
mission that she was on. There were two guys, and
she said, all right, whoever finds my shoe, you get
your own bag of green jello. And immediately both of

(37:18):
the guys were like, we gotta find it. One of
them found it. He got his own bag of green jello,
and they had a fridge on Mirror so that he
was able to like have it for himself. But apparently,
like the jello was a big bonding experience and so
like they would make jello, like every Friday, they'd all
get spoons. They'd share it together. So Jello's like a
good space food because it sticks and stays in the bag,

(37:39):
so you can just like spoon it out, and a
lot of astronauts will report that actually having meals together
and sharing food is like one of the most impactful
experiences they had. Like Leland Melvin has a book about
being an astronaut, and he talks about how, you know,
all these people from all these different countries were like
sitting around a table. Some were floating above it, some

(37:59):
were floating below, but they were all sharing a meal
together looking down at Earth, and it was just like
profound experience. So, yeah, food is so much more than
just a way to keep these wishy meat bags moving on.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
It must really be an ancient thing sharing food, because frankly,
I find it biologically weird that we sit around and
have conversation at the same time as we're using our
mouths for something else. Right, It's awkward. I'm sitting there,
I'm eating, I'm also supposed to be talking, you know,
Like the whole thing is kind of weird. It's some
like bizarre ancient primal memory of like, you know, sharing

(38:30):
food on the savannah or something.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
I think, you know, someone, I don't understand any of
these opinions. You're sharing anal if.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
We're talking about eating and poop and wouldn't it make
more biological sense for people to eat in private and
then poop together, because then you're using your mouth for
just one thing. You give me the weirdest look.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
You are supposed to come visit me in March, and
I am thinking of rescinding the invitation.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
When a biologist thinks your poop comments are weird, then
I guess you're over the line.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, you've gone too far this. Let's back things up.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Tell me more about this taco sauce in space, because
are you telling me they used taco sauce so much
it became like a condiment you could put on anything.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, and mayonnaise is also very popular, although I don't
think of mayonnaise as being super flavorful, but like, condiments
are big in space for whatever reason. So we were
talking about, you know, the cultural aspects of food. So
throughout the different space eras, there have been different programs
where folks from different cultures have come up and a
lot of them try to bring some of their own
food from home with them, and this is really exciting

(39:31):
for the astronauts because they get a chance to try
something new. And you know, things get pretty monotonous in space.
But there is also like some cofflic so for example,
they're supposed to send up fifty percent Russian food and
fifty percent American food. And there was this experiment where
diaries were taken from astronauts like every day that have
to write this is what my day was like, this
is how I felt, blah blah blah. And one of

(39:52):
the people their diary entry was I have had many
programmatic flights with the Russians about the inequality of Russians
slash US foods supposed to be fifty to fifty. They
have always had more Russian on board, using the rationale
that people like Russian food better. That is bull.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Cold war in space, Cold war in space.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Oh all right, we're about to stop for a break,
but folks should wonder while during the break, what was
Swedish issa astronaut Christopher Fugla sang. Don't send me emails
about that, sorry, guys, discouraged from bringing with him in
space in two thousand and six that he really wanted
to bring with him. We'll get back to it after

(40:37):
the break.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
I'm guessing some stinky fish thing.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
So the question is Swedish astronaut he was coming to
space in two thousand and six. What did he want
to bring with him that he was discouraged from bringing
Daniel guest stinky fish thing. So I think all fish stink.
I hate the smaller fish, which is why that job
where I had to jump into a dump truck full
of dead fish for my master's degree was just so miserable.
But actually, when the Japanese bring fish, the Russians bring fish,

(41:19):
these are very popular meals. Maybe because they're more flavorful,
Maybe it comes back to that. But no, this Swedish
astronaut wanted to bring reindeer jerky, and there was concern
that this would upset American children because.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
He's eating Rudolph.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Exactly, He's eating Santa's reindeer. I'm not going to get
Christmas presents for sure, And so instead he brought moose jerky. Anyway,
international disaster averted. So what South Korean food do you
think they had to bring?

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Kimchi?

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Of course, kim g of course, I can't say that
I'm a kimchi fan personally. And your face says you
like kimchi? Is that right?

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Is great? On everything? Oh my gosh, we're a big
fan of pickle foods.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
In my life.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
You know, Zach really likes pickled food. So you two
will have a great time when you visit. I'll stay
somewhere else. But so, the South Koreans wanted to bring kimchi,
and one of the food scientists in Korea who was
working on the kimchi said, without kimchi, Koreans feel flabby.
Not wanting a flabby astronaut.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
I think it's a big part of being Korean having kimchi. Yeah,
you got to have it or you're not really eating.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
But I don't think I would have connected it with flabbiness.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
I wonder if that was like a lost in translation
sort of thing. But so, one of the problems with
kimchi is that kimchi uses bacteria in the fermentation process,
and when NASA sends stuff up to space, they don't
want any bacteria in there because food poisoning, comput tape
blah blah blah, and so they had to try to
find a way to like get kimchi part way through
the fermentation process and then kill all the bacteria and

(42:52):
still try to make it flavorful, and apparently it didn't
really work. The Korean astronauts soyyan Yi said after radiation,
because they had to radiate it to kill the bacteria.
After radiation, the kimchi became so saggy it looked like
it was one hundred years old. I cannot say it's

(43:14):
really tasteful kimchi, but still I like it because I
can feel my home, so you know.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
But they're not really making it sterile, right, I mean,
if you were radiate foods, my microbiologist's wife would just
tell me that you're enhancing the extremophiles, right, she.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Should be a food scientist. Yeah, no, I don't know
the answer. Yeah, maybe they killed it some other way. Also,
maybe they irradiated it and then like ultra heat processed it.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
But is the concern that you're going to bring up
some bacteria that's going to get people sick, that's the idea?

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, I think so. Well, we've pretty much gone over
the history of food and space, Like, we figured a
lot of stuff out. We've got ways to make food
shelf stable, we've got some ways to make it not
taste so bad. But everybody still definitely super excited when
the fresh stuff comes up. But what party would be
complete in space or otherwise without alcohol? So, first of all,

(44:02):
I want to pitch this great book called Alcohol in
Space by Chris Carberry. It's a super fun read about
the past and future of alcohol in space. So, Daniels,
when the first American drank in space? Do you know
who or when it was?

Speaker 2 (44:17):
I have no idea who had the first drink in space.
Was it connected to the person who first the acted
in space?

Speaker 1 (44:22):
No? No, So actually I don't know if any of
the Russians had drinks in space, quick tangent Here, In general,
the Soviet space program is like way more okay with
alcohol in space. In the US program, I think they
like totally accept that the end of a stressful day
is not a problem to have like a shot of something. Yeah,
as far as I could tell, there have been no

(44:43):
instances of drinking getting out of control, where like at
the end of the day somebody had like the bottle
instead of a shot. And in fact, there was an
incident on Mirror where one of the oxygen canisters caught fire,
and so there was like a fire in space that
they were trying to put out. There was some concern
that they were going to have to abandon the space station. Afterwards,
the psychologists for the crew called up and they were like,

(45:03):
we think you should all drink a little and so
like relax. So like the Russians and the Soviets have
always been way more comfortable. And I was talking to
someone who works on life support systems for the ISS,
and even though NASA is like, no, no alcohol, You're
not supposed to have alcohol in space. The air quality
is monitored to an incredible degree on the International Space

(45:25):
Station because you know, like carbon dioxide needs to get
removed by the system. And I guess every once in
a while they pick up ethanol from the Russian side
of the space station that they're not expecting, and so
they think that's instances where like alcohol has been kind
of snuck up into space even though NASA doesn't want it,
because the Russians just don't care about it as much.
First astronaut to have a drink in space, though, was

(45:46):
buzz Aldrin.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Of course, should have guessed good old Buzz.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
I am always hesitant to joke about buzz Aldrin and
drinking because he admitted in one of his books that
he has a problem with alcoholism. But he is also
Catholic and he wanted to take communion when he landed
on the moon, and so they landed on the moon,
and before they got out of the lander, he had
a little sip of wine. So wine was the first

(46:11):
and I think only alcoholic beverage consumed on the moon.
And then he had when I was a Catholic kid
growing up, I called them christ crackers, but like the
communion wafers. He took communion on the moon, and that
was the first time anyone had alcohol on.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
The wh And was that the first communion off the
surface of the earth.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Well, that's a good question. That's the first communion that
I read about. There was a passage from the Bible
that was read during Apollo eight, which happened over Christmas.
But for a long time buzz Aldrin didn't talk about
taking communion because there was like a bit of a
brew haha about like whether religious things should be happening
in space when its taxpayer dollars in our country as

(46:48):
separation of church and state, and so I think a
lot of that stuff was hushed up and then not
mentioned until later. So maybe something happened but it wasn't reported.
But buzz Aldrin is the first instance that I know about. Wow,
So here's another important question. This conversation has been kind
of all over the place, but I'm having a lot
of fun. Would you drink beer in space? And if so,

(47:09):
why are why not? Do you drink beer at all?

Speaker 2 (47:11):
I'm a fan of beer, absolutely, I think beer is delicious,
and in our house again, we're big fans of all
kinds of fermented foods where ilied with the microbes and
make our bread and our beer and our pickles and
all sorts of stuff. I think I would like to
enjoy beer in space, but I'd be worried a little
bit about the burping. Do you burp in space? The
same way? Now? I'm thinking about how the Earth plays
a role in all of my biological functions, moving stuff

(47:33):
up and down and all the round, And so I'd
be worried about like a large gas bubble forming inside
of me.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Exactly. Yeah, so burping in space is apparently very unpleasant.
Those air bubbles often like bring food up with them also,
So like Pepsi and Coke during the Cola Wars or whatever,
they both sent their beverages up to space and space
particular containers. I can't remember if they sent them up
flat because they knew this was a proud or if

(48:00):
it was really unpleasant for people, because but anyway, carbonated
beverages not appreciated in space because burping in space is
a very unpleasant experience.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Well that's too bad, because burping on the surface of
the Earth is really pretty great. And I'm a big
fan of sparkling water and all sorts of other carbonated beverages.
So what a big bum about going at I know.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
I totally agree. Like Zach is not in your camp
at all. He thinks all bodily sounds should be kept
to oneself. I don't know why he married a biologist.
We all make mistakes, but like one of the nice
things about Mars might be that if you did beer
on Mars, that gravity might be enough to sort of
make the problem of belching go away or at least

(48:41):
be less unpleasant. So yeah, or rotating space stations, you know,
So we have to solve these problems quickly so that
we can start bringing beer to space.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yes, absolutely, because if humans are going to live in
space or on other planets, we've got to figure out
how to keep people happy. It's not just about survival,
it's about living life and quality of life. We don't
just want to eke out some primitive like existence where
we're squeezing food tubes into each other's mouths. We want
to actually have joy and fun out in space or

(49:09):
on other planets.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah, right, so biosphere. We're going to talk about Biosphere
two in the next episode. But to sort of cut
to the chase on that story, they lost a bunch
of weight because they couldn't produce enough food in this
facility where they were trying to like close every same thing,
so the plants would make the oxygen and they would
remove the carbon dioxide and that would also be what
they ate. And the men lost eighteen percent of their

(49:33):
body weight and the women lost ten percent. Oh but
even though they were having trouble getting enough calories for
dinner and they were like literally like licking their bowls
to try to get the last of everything, they took
some of their precious bananas to make banana wine, because,
like you said, it's not just about eking out in existence. Like,
plenty of people have great lives without alcohol, but some

(49:56):
of us really like to have a glass of wine
at the end of the day or something. And they
were willing to give up some of their calories, so
that they could make this wine to bring them a
little bit of joy at the end of a hard day.
I think they were doing like eight to ten hours
of labor tending their crops five and a half days
a week, so it was like intense. And Andy Weir,
so he's the guy who wrote The Martian, and in

(50:17):
The Martian his main character Mark Wattney. I think the
guy's name is he eats a bunch of potatoes, and
those potatoes the fertilizer is like human poo. And people
have asked Andy Weir a lot, why didn't he use
any of those potatoes to make liquor, And Andy Weer
answered that, like, it would have taken so many potatoes

(50:39):
to make the liquor that he just he probably would
have died, he wouldn't have gotten enough calories. And I
think that's a totally reasonable conclusion to come to. But
when you actually have humans who are starving, we will
make banana wine because we need to be happy too.
So yeah, I think the trick for space. Like so,
as we mentioned, a lot of these missions are short.
They're like weeks, months, maybe a year or something, so

(51:02):
you can handle eating food that's not super flavorful. But
when we're finally settling somewhere and staying there for years
at a time, there's a lot that we need to
learn so that we can get better about this kind
of stuff, because like rehydrated potatoes are not going to
cut it for a lifetime. So in the next episode,
we'll talk more about the future of food and space.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
I mean, even on airplane flights. The first approach, which
is just like, get some food up there which is
edible and not going to kill people. People are not
cool with it, right, And this is why we now
have pretty good food on airplanes because companies realize, like
humans will always want good food, they will pay a
little bit more to have good food. Even if you're
just any air for a few hours. It's not okay

(51:46):
to just squeeze something into your mouth to survive. It's
part of living and it's part of enjoying this extraordinary universe.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Humans also want more leg room. Airlines take note, work
on that two planes. Even I'm that tall, all.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Right, Airplane engineers work on more legroom. In the meantime,
stay tuned for our next episode about food in space.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
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Speaker 2 (52:22):
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