Creating high-quality, nutritious food for astronauts is an extremely responsible and complex matter. It was this question that became one of the main problems after the first manned space flight. After all, it was already calculated that in order to maintain the necessary form and healthy image During their flight life, women should consume at least 2800 kilocalories, and men - 3200.
Initially, it was planned to create special tablets containing the necessary vitamins, minerals and nutrients. But these ideas were never put into practice, although worthy alternatives were developed over the years.
First options when creating food for astronauts
Just like the space industry itself, the astronaut nutrition industry has undergone many changes over the decades. There were special departments and services that were involved in developing food for workers in the difficult conditions of outer space. And all this time, ordinary people were wondering how this happens and what the astronauts eat in orbit.
During the first flights, no special manipulations were required in terms of feeding the astronauts - the flights were not too long, so it was only necessary to provide people with the optimal amount of calories and vitamins. They were given specially designed tubes with homogenized first and second courses.
After a longer stay in space, ideas began to be developed for more effective and high-quality nutrition for people, which continued for decades. It was immediately recognized that food for astronauts should be as nutritious and healthy as possible, have a unique consistency and be stored for a long time.
Optimal diet and convenient transportation of space food
The first thing the developers did was create a complete diet for space workers. Experts have calculated that in extreme conditions During a flight into space, meals must be taken 4 times a day, and the interval between them must be at least five hours. In addition, in products for daily nutrition must be:
- 300 grams of carbohydrates;
- 100 g protein;
- 118 g fat;
- the required amount of vitamins and minerals.
After developing the menu, the question arose about the most efficient way to transport food. Then convenient aluminum tubes appeared, in which first and second courses, as well as drinks, were packaged in the form of puree. The weight of each tube was standard 160-165 grams.
Thus, the issue of preserving the nutritional value of products, their compactness and shelf life was resolved. It was equally important to monitor the sterility of food. In addition, food had to be digested as quickly as possible and, accordingly, leave a minimum of toxins.
A modern approach to space nutrition
Over time, another method of providing nutrition to astronauts while in space was introduced. Finished products are frozen and then abruptly dried at very high temperatures. high temperature. This way the ice immediately turns into a vapor state without turning into a liquid. Food becomes much lighter in weight without losing nutrients.
Such food began to be packaged in plastic, and dishes that remained in a semi-liquid or puree state were packaged in special aluminum jars. And although there has been a list of permitted products and a special menu approved by experts for many years, they try to make the stay of astronauts on long business trips as comfortable as possible.
Therefore, in addition to standard dishes, they are trying to diversify the space menu in every possible way, including national dishes and even the favorite culinary delights of astronauts.
And here is an example of the diet of an astronaut on the ISS from current cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev
Previously, the astronaut did not take off his spacesuit throughout the entire flight. Now in Everyday life he wears a T-shirt with shorts or overalls. T-shirts in orbit in six colors to choose from depending on your mood. Instead of buttons there are zippers and Velcro: they won’t come off. The more pockets the better. Oblique breastplates allow you to quickly hide objects so that they do not fly apart in zero gravity. Wide calf pockets are useful because astronauts often assume the fetal position. Instead of shoes, thick socks are worn.
Toilet
The first astronauts wore diapers. They are still used now, but only during spacewalks and during takeoff and landing. A waste disposal system began to be developed at the dawn of astronautics. The toilet operates on the principle of a vacuum cleaner. The rarefied air flow sucks in the waste, and it ends up in a bag, which is then unfastened and thrown into the container. Another takes his place. Filled containers are sent into outer space - they burn up in the atmosphere. At the Mir station, liquid waste was purified and turned into drinking water. For body hygiene, wet wipes and towels are used. Although “shower cabins” have also been developed.
Food
Tubes of food have become a symbol of the space lifestyle. They began to be made in Estonia in the 1960s. Squeezing from tubes, the astronauts ate chicken fillet, beef tongue and even borscht. In the 80s, sublimated products began to be delivered into orbit - up to 98% of the water was removed from them, which significantly reduces mass and volume. Pour into a bag with dry mixture hot water- and lunch is ready. They also eat canned food on the ISS. The bread is packaged in small bite-size loaves to prevent crumbs from scattering throughout the compartment: this is fraught with problems. The kitchen table has holders for containers and utensils. A “suitcase” is also used to heat food.
Cabin
In zero gravity, it doesn’t matter where you sleep, the main thing is to securely fix your body. On the ISS, sleeping bags with zippers are attached directly to the walls. By the way, in the cabins of Russian cosmonauts there are portholes that allow you to admire the view of the Earth before going to bed. But Americans don’t have “windows”. The cabin contains personal belongings, photos of relatives, and music players. All small objects (tools, pencils, etc.) are either slipped under special rubber bands on the walls or secured with Velcro. For this purpose, the walls of the ISS are covered with fleecy material. There are also many handrails at the station.
A COMMENT
Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS:
- The life of astronauts has improved significantly. On board the ISS there is the Internet, the ability to send messages and read news. Communication tools make it possible to connect astronauts with their family and friends by telephone. There is always a lot of food at the station. Moreover, the astronauts choose their own menu.
You can make borscht, mashed potatoes, and pasta from freeze-dried foods. The only thing left in the tubes now is juice and a small nutrition kit used on approach to the station.
With every cargo ship We also send fresh products. The astronauts live full life. The only thing that bothers me is the noise of the fans. They work all the time, but you can’t live without them.
IN terrestrial conditions in a person’s diet, which he can afford according to the season and his pocket. To a small extent, nutrition depends on the time of year, since canning food reduces its quality to some extent. , which can be made from them, a person also requires conditions of existence, which can also be conditionally attributed to nutrition.
Science 2.0 - Space food. Lunch in zero gravity
Space food
Travelers and sailors know this well. Especially the last ones. Their experience was closest to the issues faced in preparing to send people into space.
A person can stay in space, that is, on board a spacecraft, from several hours to many months. It will be sharply limited in medical care, in water supply, in natural sunlight. The funny weightlessness will be a very big load at first. Under its influence, many muscles will weaken, since the natural load on them will disappear. The absence of gravity will reduce the load even on the heart muscle, since in space the concepts of “up” and “down” have no mechanical meaning. To "deceive" nature, astronauts must bear intense physical activity with the help of specially made simulators, which on board are not a luxury at all, but a necessary thing. Among other things, the state of health and well-being can be affected by the influence of radiation, which in space is much greater than on Earth, and there are fewer ways to protect it.
Cost of space flights
One kilogram of cargo launched into low-Earth orbit costs at least $5,000. The reason for this, of course, is not speculation. Modern way living in space is either a “business trip” there on an American ship from the Shuttle series, or life on board a space station. The shuttle stays in orbit for a week or two, then lands on Earth. For such a time, and the Shuttle crew consists of seven people, it is quite possible to stock up on food and water for the entire crew. In the case of a space station, people live there much longer.
Products, like other cargo and “passengers,” are delivered into orbit by simple ships using rockets. This is the path of the Soviet-Russian space industry. At one time, he allowed the USSR to set a record for man in space, and hold it for a very long time. Due to detente and further reductions in costs for space flights, such an object as the International Space Station (ISS) arose. However, even now, “carrying” cargo there is not at all cheap, both for the USA and for the Russian Federation.
Unfortunately, there are no cheap ways to overcome the forces of gravity. To refuel a rocket capable of launching a Zaporozhets car into orbit, you will need to have almost a railroad grade of fuel, which quite possibly costs more than the rocket and ship itself.
Requirements for space cooking
It follows directly from the previous section that products should occupy as little weight as possible. At the same time, their quality must be special in order to exclude any medical disorders from the crews, since this is again a matter of huge expenses.
The crazy idea of eating “pills that are completely absorbed” was abandoned from the very beginning. The human stomach and intestines must always function in a normal daily routine. In addition, foods must be rich in calcium and vitamin D for its metabolism, and here you can’t get off with pills, without, funny as it may seem, “a great need.”
Therefore, the efforts of specialists were aimed at reducing the weight of products while maintaining their nutritional properties from the very beginning. There has already been a solution; sailors use drying. But it needed to be improved. Natural drying did not provide everything that was needed. In addition, dry foods are also dangerous on board - crumbs caught in Airways, can cause severe suffocation and accidents.
In case of contact with the eyes, the danger is less, but in space a person must be ready every minute to mobilize all forces to correct, as they say, emergency situations, and therefore a speck in the eye would be unacceptable. Before consumption, dried food must be converted not only into an edible state (you can also eat dry foods), but also into a safe state. In addition, crumbs are just dust in the short term, and it can interfere with the operation of equipment (optical without the slightest doubt), quite possibly related to ensuring safety on board, where the possibilities of wet cleaning are, at least, very limited.
To dry products, freezing and vacuum sublimation are used, when water evaporates without turning into a liquid state. This makes it possible to almost completely preserve them nutritional value. Such products are placed in lightweight plastic packaging, each gram of which costs, as already mentioned, at least $5. Products in a semi-liquid state: cereals, canned meat, purees, etc., are placed in metal cans made of thin aluminum.
The inner surface of these cans is coated with a special varnish. This is done in order to prevent the release of hydrogen from acidic products upon contact with aluminum. Expression " sour foods“must be understood in a chemical sense, of course, and there can be no talk of them being “soured.” The freshness and quality of space products are such that on Earth even heads of state eat worse in this sense. But the Earth is man’s native habitat, while space is a different matter.
It’s interesting how they prepare bread for Russian cosmonauts. It is bread, not biscuits and crackers, like the Americans. A loaf of bread weighs only three grams. But you can put it directly into your mouth, entirely. It is very comfortable. Russians cannot live without baked bread, and it easily forms crumbs. The astronaut eats as many three-gram loaves as needed. And it can be argued that a loaf of bread in space costs the same as in most Russian stores. Only in dollars.
In addition to the purely chemical condition: the composition of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, space products must be completely sterile. Foreign “living creatures” on board habitable space objects are taken very seriously. A common flu or cold could cost taxpayers in Russia or the United States millions of dollars if complications develop among people on board.
As for the menu, they strive to make it varied. Doctors knew this ancient China, and modern doctors (even Russian ones, who are accustomed to tormenting patients, for their own good, of course) make concessions to the cosmonauts whenever possible, adding their favorite dishes to the lists of allowed ones. In addition, astronauts participate in testing new dishes, and even give them subjective assessment. It seems that the traditions of Soviet medicine, for which a person was a biorobot, are gradually becoming obsolete.
Of course, tubes of “vodka” are a joke. Alcohol is prohibited on board not because of possible fights or “accidents”; the cosmonauts, although simple technical guys, are quite intelligent and well-mannered people, but because alcohol can have an unpredictable effect on cardiovascular activity in conditions of weightlessness. For the same reason, tobacco is also excluded on board, not to mention the composition of the air and its importance for the equipment. Although the old, naive books talked about “a stock of the best cigars.” However, it turns out that you can still drink tea and coffee, although there should be very little caffeine per serving; most likely an imitation of a real drink. Drinks are dominated by fruit and vegetable juices, dried, of course. How they, and everything else, are used will be discussed in the next section.
Earthly kitchen and space dishes
On Earth, the most suitable materials are selected for space needs. best products. Each nation does this due to its traditions. NASA purchases power from several suppliers, American, of course. In Russia, with its authoritarian traditions, there is only one enterprise - this makes it easier to keep everything under control. In addition, post-Soviet Russia is full of unscrupulous suppliers, and this can be costly.
The enterprise in question produces a small volume of products, but its quality is subject to high requirements, namely the composition of products, their sterility, packaging, and packaging. Most of the products are made by hand. By the way, this is not a drawback at all - good products, and not everyone can afford personal chefs these days. Equipment for packaging in plastic and metal cans is, of course, more complicated than rolling pins and kitchen knives, but there is not much of it. Most likely, it is all Soviet and Russian production. According to some reports, one serving of any dish from there costs about 1,000 rubles, although this may turn out to be a fake.
The diet for each astronaut is individual, compiled according to the instructions of doctors. Canned food is placed in a small container with straps, and bags with other products are also placed there. The lid is supplied with an inventory of the contents. The size of this “case” is approximately the size of a schoolboy’s briefcase, and there is enough food for about three days. All this is sent on board the station in a space truck - an automatic ship, which docks to the Russian part of the ISS. Of course, it’s not just food that flies there. The used packaging is put back and the truck leaves. Whether he parachutes to Earth or simply throws himself into the ocean depends on flight plans and schedules.
There are no conditions for luxurious serving in orbit, and weightlessness there sets its own rules. A space dining table and not a table at all. This is a table-sized unit, but equipped with a filling unusual for Earth. The astronauts store food in special nests, from where they take out their “cases” and choose what they need. Cans are placed in special slots in the “table” where food is heated.
After this, they are opened with a regular can opener. Astronauts use regular spoons, albeit with slightly longer handles. In terms of volume, the spoon is a dessert spoon, larger than a teaspoon and smaller than a tablespoon. The plates at the station are a luxury, instead people eat straight from the cans. This is justified by weightlessness. Food taken with a spoon must be viscous in zero gravity, otherwise it will begin to fly around. It's strange to see how the cans hang, turning slightly in the air, and the astronauts push them slightly with their hands. This was done, of course, more for a television interview.
With drinking and liquid products - the greatest difficulties
The bag with the drink is connected to another unit, which has a remote control with buttons and fittings. By pressing a button, the astronaut lets the required amount of water into the bag and the freeze-dried concentrate absorbs the water after a while. Now you can eat it, but straight from the bag. The package may contain soup or puree, as well as a drink. By the way, the generally accepted opinion about water regeneration – “cosmonauts drink purified urine” – is a philistine fantasy. The reclaimed water is used to produce oxygen, and the hydrogen is released overboard. Water supplies are delivered by trucks. High-quality water purification in space is very expensive.
An interesting way to deal with crumbs. Still, there are products that produce crumbs. There is a special fan built into the table for them. The astronauts nicknamed him “the penny-pincher.” The crumbling product is cut on a fine-mesh metal mesh, and a fan draws air into it along with the crumbs. This eliminates serious problem with a source of dust. Once upon a time, an onboard heating system fan and a napkin were used for these purposes, but over time the designers made a more convenient device.
In space you can even eat upside down, since it has already been said that there are no concepts of “up” and “down”. If there are many astronauts at the table, then they have to show considerable dexterity so as not to interfere with each other in cramped spaces. At the same time, they also watch TV programs or films. We must assume that they have enough work, because, as a rule, busy people watch TV while eating.
But most of all, it turns out, astronauts dream of sitting, namely sitting at a table on which there are ordinary dishes that do not fly through the air.
Many still believe that our cosmonauts, while in orbit, continue to eat some substance from tubes, washing it all down with drops of water dangling in the air. However, in reality, Russian researchers have long been taking almost home-made food, fresh fruits and juices with them on space travel. A correspondent for the online publication site, without leaving his home planet, tried what astronauts eat and found out how black caviar is eaten in space, what “dried” cottage cheese tastes like, why they wanted to send a real goat into orbit together with Valentina Tereshkova, and when space food will be sold in supermarkets.
Space as a premonition
Not only Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin and other cosmonauts, but also food industry workers were preparing for the first manned space flight. Although at that time it was not yet known whether a person, being for a long time in zero gravity, swallow food. However, for the first flight, nine types of products were prepared in tubes: pureed soups, main courses, juice, canned food in a 100-gram jar and even natural sandwiches. The technology for making bread then - almost 60 years ago - and now is not much different: it is made, as they say, in one bite, so that the crumbs do not scatter throughout the spaceship. Having completed the flight, Yuri Gagarin confirmed: you can eat in space. He also highly appreciated the taste of the food prepared for him “for the journey.”
While the astronauts spent a small amount of time in flight - from several hours to several days, they could easily eat food from the tubes, especially since natural vegetables and fruits, pies with all kinds of fillings and even sandwiches with black caviar and cutlets were sent into orbit with them. , which made the diet more varied. However, at that time spacecraft were not yet equipped with special devices for watering, to dilute food, and for heating food, so it was not possible to fully feel at home on board the spacecraft.
As the duration of flights increased, the task of providing astronauts with food that was as close as possible to earthly food became increasingly urgent. Moreover, the food in the tubes quickly became boring and the astronauts would not be able to eat it for many months.
Cook at home
The freeze-dried food that our cosmonauts now take on flights has become a real lifesaver for them. Such food looks a little strange, representing solid bars highly compressed in vacuum packaging.
Sublimation is a long and expensive process. First, the food is prepared in the usual way, just like at home. The food is then poured onto special “trays” and placed in a sublimator, a machine in which it is dried. However, not everything is so simple. Before drying, the product is frozen at a temperature of minus 30–50 degrees, while the food is in a vacuum. Then slow heating begins at a temperature of plus 50–70 degrees, at which deletion in progress water, which is there in the form of ice crystals.
If in normal conditions When defrosting, moisture appears, then there is nothing like that in the sublimator due to the vacuum and slow heating. Ice turns into steam, so the product cell is not destroyed and nutrients do not evaporate from it. The weight and volume of freeze-dried food are reduced significantly, but beneficial features it preserves almost in full - up to 97 percent. Then the finished product is placed in another special bag. By the way, it serves both as packaging and a kind of “plate”.
Photo gallery
During a missile test, the Indian military destroyed a space satellite that was in low Earth orbit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in an address to the nation.1 of 5
Due to their unusual appearance, some freeze-dried foods can only be identified by the name on the label. But here there is a wide variety of all kinds of products: there is puree with pork, borscht with meat, rassolnik, beet salad, Bulgarian beans, and cottage cheese with several types of toppings.
Victor Dobrovolsky
Photo: website/Lidiya Shironina
By the way, the chief designer of space nutrition of the Research Institute of Food Concentrate Industry and Special Food Technology - a branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Federal Research Center for Nutrition and Biotechnology" Viktor Dobrovolsky says that cottage cheese with nut filling is especially popular among our cosmonauts and is an integral part of their diet. As the site's correspondent was convinced, preference is given to this product for a reason - this cottage cheese is really very tasty.
At the same time, the sweets that are sent into space look just like those on earth. For example, lollipops, toffees or marmalade slices differ only in that they are placed in vacuum packaging. Astronauts also take coffee, tea, juices sublimated to a powder form, as well as all kinds of canned food in small 100-gram jars with them on the flight. In addition, fresh fruits and vegetables are sent into space - treated from germs and wrapped in special packaging.
Sublimates are the future
As you understand, there are no plates or cups on the ISS. And the cooking process itself is as simple as possible - the astronauts take a bag of food, open it and “cook” it in accordance with the instructions - add water (cold or heated to a certain temperature). Then they wait a few minutes, knead the swollen component and... eat almost home-made food, since the “powder” under the influence of water takes on the appearance of the originally prepared dish, as if the soup or main dish had just been taken off the stove. Such freeze-dried food is unlikely to get boring - there is too much variety. And the menu is constantly being improved: food scientists are constantly testing more and more new products that can be sent into space.
But testing of space food takes place on Earth - at the cosmonaut training center in Star City. There they not only evaluate the taste of food, but also train to eat it correctly in zero gravity conditions.
For each astronaut, in addition to the mandatory daily calorie diet, a special individual set is prepared, in which the dish, for example, can have more or less salt or added sugar.
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During a missile test, the Indian military destroyed a space satellite that was in low Earth orbit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in an address to the nation.1 of 9
Experts say that in the future, when people begin to regularly fly to the Moon and Mars, the basis of the diet will be freeze-dried food. Tablets are unlikely to replace “earthly” food, at least until humanity forgets how to chew and the need for teeth disappears as a rudiment. Now on the ISS, astronauts grow some greens (dill, parsley, onions, lettuce); it is possible that in the future more “serious” crops, for example, cucumbers and potatoes, will grow in the space greenhouse. Moreover, there is enough time to harvest the crop - it will take a whole year to fly to Mars.
Viktor Dobrovolsky says that our cosmonauts do not have any exotic wishes in terms of gastronomic delights. Sometimes they ask to send them tangerines, confectionery, sausages - that is, food industrial production. It will not be possible to buy such things in a store and send a “package” into space - all products are purchased and controlled in advance. Special attention is paid to microbiological safety - there must be a 100 percent guarantee that not a single microbe will enter orbit, because it is unknown how this or that microorganism will behave in zero gravity.
During the preparation of space food for “terrestrial” purposes, no preservatives are added either, and the shelf life is achieved solely through technology - absolutely the same as for preparing food for flight into space.
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This year marks exactly 50 years since the launch of the first multi-seat spacecraft, Voskhod-1. From that moment on, the astronauts setting off on the flight had someone to break a piece of bread with. At the same time, ordinary people who remained on Earth have always been terribly interested in finding out what the conquerors of the cosmic depths actually eat.
Today you can taste real cosmonaut food, for example, at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics at the All-Russian Exhibition Center. However, in order to fully experience all the delights of a space meal, you still need to ascend into Earth’s orbit, since the process of eating in space is quite complicated, and a simulator for ordinary inhabitants of the Earth has not yet been created.
HE SAID: LET'S GO!
Over half a century of space flights, astronaut food has gone through a long path of evolution, no less complex than the improvement of all space technology as a whole. The first menu for the astronauts was rather meager. For example, Yuri Gagarin, despite the fact that he spent very little time in space, nevertheless had on board full lunch. Soviet scientists prepared several dishes for him, packaged in special tubes, such as liquid pasta and chocolate sauce.
True, Yuri Gagarin only tasted food as an experiment. The first person who managed to have a full meal in space was German Titov, whose flight was a fantastic 25 hours for that time. For the first course he ate a glass of vegetable puree soup, the second course was liver pate, and for the third there was a glass of blackcurrant juice. In just one day of flight, the second cosmonaut of the USSR ate food three times, but, by his own admission, he remained hungry!
Subsequently, the menu of Soviet cosmonauts included beef jellied tongue, fish pies, Ukrainian borscht, entrecotes, Pozharsky cutlets, chicken fillet, two dozen varieties of juices, fruit purees and vegetable sauces. By the 1980s, the astronauts’ diet consisted of more than 200 different types of dishes.
American astronauts, trying to catch up and overtake the Soviet space explorers, ate food during their flights in the form of small pieces of food, special powders and liquids. However, they really did not like such meals, consisting of freeze-dried foods. Moreover, there was fear: how would the astronaut’s body react to eating food in space?
True, John Glenn, an American who made the first orbital flight under the US flag on February 20, 1962, said that, despite his fears, there is nothing wrong with swallowing food in space, and clenching the throat muscles in zero gravity is almost no different from a similar process in On Earth, the only thing that both Western and domestic cosmonauts noted is that sometimes there is a significant distortion of the taste of products.
The first domestic tubes with food weighed 165 grams, and the first sample of the products of a specialized plant was taken by Yuri Gagarin himself. By the way, in space, in addition to the same pasta and chocolate sauce, he had borscht, potatoes, cutlets and juices. After all, no one knew what kind of food the human body could safely take in space. Gagarin reassured: “You can eat from tubes!”
EVOLUTION OF THE SPACE DINING
Back in the early 1960s, the first developers of food for astronauts asked a simple question: what criteria should it satisfy? It turned out to be just a few: retain all nutrients, be fully absorbed by the body, be compact and have as little waste as possible.
It is not surprising that at first the scientists came up with the idea of a miracle pill that would contain everything necessary for human body nutrients. Not so! It was not possible to invent such a pill, especially since the astronauts urgently demanded normal human food.
As a result, in the first years of manned space exploration, flight participants were offered portable food. These were three-course meals, each of which was sealed in a tube (similar to the one in which toothpaste). The food was squeezed out of the tube by the astronaut himself directly into his mouth.
It’s interesting that today every member of the cosmonaut corps tastes a variety of dishes when going into space. He rates each of them on a ten-point scale. The food that received the highest ratings is prepared for flight, while the “losers” remain on Earth. Then a varied menu is prepared for eight days, after which the entire cycle of dishes is repeated.
The astronauts eat like children, four times during the allotted time. As a rule, the menu includes: Borodino bread in the form of tiny bars (so that there are no crumbs: mini bars are eaten in one bite), honey gingerbread, ham, pork in sweet and sour sauce, beef with mayonnaise, azu, quail, pike perch, chicken fried in jelly, cheese, sturgeon, cottage cheese, green cabbage soup and borscht, cutlets with mashed potatoes, strawberries, cookies, chocolate, tea and coffee.
At the same time, modern astronauts like to snack on fresh fruits and vegetables in Earth orbit. Most often, the choice falls on those products that grow in the astronaut’s homeland. Americans prefer citrus fruits, while domestic space explorers prefer their native apples, tomatoes or onions. It got to the point that astronauts even began to celebrate holidays with national dishes. Thus, Swede Christer Fuglesang was forbidden to take baked meat into space. Instead, he celebrated Christmas with venison jerky on the table.
DINNER IS SERVED
However, it is not enough to deliver food into orbit; it must first be properly prepared on Earth, and then be able to be heated in space. How does this happen in practice? The products are first frozen to -50 degrees, and then, under vacuum conditions, heated to +50 within 32 hours. ..+70 degrees. In this case, the ice does not turn into water, but instantly evaporates, retaining in the product all the nutrients that usually go away with water, significantly reducing the volume and weight of each serving of space food.
It sounds surprising, but today cereals, canned meats and various purees, once in space in metal cans made of thin aluminum, are an analogue of ordinary terrestrial canned food. For drinks, astronauts drink dried fruit and vegetable juices.
Food is delivered into orbit in a small container, on the lid of which is necessarily attached an inventory of the products contained in it. The size of each “food package” is no larger than a schoolboy’s schoolbag from Soviet times and contains a three-day food ration for one cosmonaut. During meals, cans are set to " kitchen table"in special nests, where they are first heated, and then the astronauts open them with ordinary can openers.
Eating is also done using ordinary spoons directly from jars. It is only the intake of liquid that causes certain difficulties. The package with the drink concentrate is attached to a special unit, which, using complex technology, releases the required amount of water into it. The result is soup, puree or juice. Their astronauts drink directly from the bags.
At the same time, it’s acute in space. there is the problem of crumbs from cookies or bread, which can get into the eye or cause damage to expensive spacecraft instruments or orbital station, so they are destroyed using a special fan built into the “kitchen table”.
There are other problems in space besides crumbs. Thus, in zero gravity, any liquid, including that drunk by an astronaut, tends to rise, thereby increasing the risk of nasal blockage and swelling of the entire face. It is difficult for bones to retain and replenish calcium losses, muscles atrophy, causing intestinal problems and increased heart rate.
But the most unusual thing is the change in the astronaut’s height during the flight. Scientists have noticed that due to low blood pressure, affecting the astronaut’s spine during the flight, almost all of them, after returning home, gain an average of 3-5 cm in height.
FOOD PLANT
Of course, the production of space food requires unique equipment. Today, only one enterprise produces “space food” for Russia and the CIS countries. This is the Biryulevsky experimental plant PACXH, which is located in the Leninsky district of the Moscow region. The plant's management has repeatedly stated in numerous interviews that the creation of space food is an extremely complex task, requiring the use of the most modern technologies.
And how could it be otherwise, since food sent into space must take up relatively little space, retain all nutrients, be sterile, and most importantly, be stored for a long time. Today, astronauts are fed on the basis that a man in space should consume 3,200 kilocalories daily, and a woman - 2,800.
IN this moment Biryulyovskoe production supplies 80 percent of domestic space crews with products. The remaining twenty are mainly canned fish and dishes. They are produced at a similar plant in St. Petersburg.
In order for the reader to appreciate the work of “space chefs”, a few figures can be cited: over the entire history of manned flights into space, more than 80 tons of food have been sent, 50 thousand food rations have been developed, and the average space lunch these days costs about 20 thousand rubles. Moreover, this is the cost of just producing lunch, and the cost of delivering food into space is, of course, calculated separately.
Dmitry LAVOCHKIN
