• Question: do you think that real food (not space food) into space.

    Asked by truffles to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Martin Zaltz Austwick

      Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I think you could get real food into space. I’m not sure why they haven’t the past – I would guess it’s partly because of room/weight on the shuttle, partly to keep it fresh, and partly because a lasagne is going to look pretty gross floating past your face…

    • Photo: Marcus Gallagher-Jones

      Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Yeah I think the biggest challenges are storage and keeping the components of a meal together. It’s enough of a challenge drinking water in space and hate to think of the mess you’d make trying to cook. Maybe when we have that artificial gravity thing sorted…

    • Photo: Suzanne McEndoo

      Suzanne McEndoo answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      You’d probably have to invent some new cooking methods. You could still use a george forman grill, but it wouldn’t be as healthy, because the grill (and regular grills) use gravity to pull the fat away from the food. Baking would probably work. You could set your chicken rotating and leave it in the centre, so it would be evenly cooked! Frying and boiling would be pretty tricky too.

      Actually, maybe the biggest problem would be all those sources of heat exposed, if you’re floating around and keep bumping into things.

      It would be the downside of being in space. Pizza would be ok, but I’m not sure chopsticks would still work, so chinese is out.

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