Wednesday 22 February 2012

Space tucker

What?  No Tang?
We've got some hard facts about that Mars mission simulation that NASA wants to run on a lava bed in Hawaii.  Apparently, the purpose is to find the ideal menu for Mars-bound astronauts.

Doesn't seem that hard a task to me.  Lay in some ship's biscuit, bully beef, a few wheels of cheese, dried peas, sauerkraut, jam, tea, bacon, porridge, Bovril, tinned butter, tinned milk, powdered eggs, lime juice, beer, and an ample supply of rum* and and you're set.

Oh, and the shrimp cocktail, of course.

*Pemmican, cocoa and Kendal mint cakes will also be available for landing parties on Mars.

3 comments:

eon said...

Food; Palatable and Nutritious, or Low Mass and Volume. Your choice.

The trouble with space travel provisioning is that most "space food" ideas only work if you can disregard the human GI tract. Few such brainstorms have enough bulk or roughage to keep the astronaut healthy.

And let's not even talk about the, err, by-products. Those have to be dealt with, too.

Any way you look at it, humans are very inefficient components of a space vehicle. Unless, of course, you modify them...


cheers

eon

Ironmistress said...

In the sixties the Americans spent millions of dollars to develop food and packing which could be cooked and eaten in the space.

The Russians did like every camper would have done. They took canned food with them to the space.

Having tasted both Russian canned food and NASA space food I can say the Russians won 6-0.

eon said...

Ironmistress;

Having also had both, I agree. And I don't even particularly like borscht.

cheers

eon