Space Food

In the early days, the space race was about who could send a monkey into orbit, followed by sending a man into orbit.  Then the race switched to who could put a man on the moon with a monkey as the commander of the mission.  I might be getting details wrong here, but you get the idea.  Next, it was about who could land on the sun with monkeys (at night of course when it is cooler).  And from all of this we somehow got Planet of the Apes!

 

The first person from planet Earth to eat in space was, not surprisingly, the first person in space.  His name was Yuri Gagarin.  He was a Russian cosmonaut who orbited the Earth in 1961.  His first meal?  A tube of beef and liver paste – true story.  The first three letters of his last name are only coincidental, but apropos in this case.  His orbital flight only took 108 minutes.  Why in the world would you eat a tube of beef and liver paste on such a short flight?  Just wait till you land and upgrade to Chuck E. Cheese!  Other early space missions used freeze-dried food cubes covered in gel to prevent them from crumbling and fouling the instruments of the spacecraft.

 

Well, the Chinese have just won a crucial victory in the modern-era space race, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas ought to be ashamed that the Chinese beat us on this!  It was just reported in the IFL Science Journal that Chinese astronauts have just “had humanity’s first-ever barbecue in space!” aboard the Tiangong Space Station.  Uber eats delivered it!  I may have made that part up.  The meat of choice?  Barbecued chicken wings!

 

Fire cannot be used in spacecrafts filled with oxygen.  Smoke is a problem too.  It doesn’t just rise into the atmosphere in a space station.  Until now, astronauts have never been able to truly cook anything in space.  Previously they could only heat their cubed and gelled foods.  The innovation and science used to pull this off was impressive!  The Chinese apparently built a deck on the outside of their spacecraft with a built in Grill Master 5000!

 

Actually, it was a special hot air oven that made all this possible.  Now we can barbecue in space.  We can build the spacecraft to send men and women into space!  We have spacecrafts orbiting distant planets and their moons.  Mars has a functioning space rover sending back amazing images.  Meanwhile, back on planet Earth we still can’t stop spam callers, spam emails, or spam texts.

 

I have had my own journey with food.  I entered Army basic training in 1981.  Back then, all soldiers wore a little can opener with their dog tags.  This was to open the civil war era tin cans that used to be a part of our MREs (Meals Rejected by Ethiopians).  The food was gross!  The worst was the dehydrated pork patties that smelled about as bad as they tasted and could be used to re-sole Army boots.  If the enemy didn’t kill you, the U.S. Government-issued food would!

 

As time went on MREs made advancements also.  Ingenious little heaters were included in every MRE to heat main courses (no longer housed in tin cans).  Applesauce packets and M&Ms were frequent contents of more modern MREs.  Coffee creamer powder could be poured over a lit match to make an impressive fire ball!  And many of the meals even tasted quite good.

 

Children growing up today who become astronauts will eat better than Neil Armstrong.  If they go into the Army, they really should try the coffee creamer poured over a match trick!  They will likely still get daily spam calls and texts.  But I think we have once and for all rid the world of dehydrated pork patties!