Space Food Disasters

[Jason Perlow]

What are the biggest mistakes and/or food disasters that have come about through the food program?-i.e. have there been foods that the astronauts really hated or that were impossible to warm or rehydrate to a satisfactory outcome?

[jhlurie]

Foods they hated? I was thinking... space disasters would be more like floating food caught in the vents or something.

[MGLloyd]

Foods they hated?  I was thinking... space disasters would be more like floating food caught in the vents or something.

I know exactly what you mean. Like the time Homer rode the shuttle, opened the potato chip bag and the chips flew everywhere in the cabin. (You fool! They'll clog the instruments!) In a homage to 2001, a space odyssey, Homer gracefully flew about the cabin to the strains of the 'Blue Danube Waltz' munching the chips. And then, the ants escaped.....

Edited January 15, 2004 by MGLloyd (log)

[jhlurie]

What I'm really curious about is silverware. I wonder if ANY of it is safe enough to use in microgravity, or whether everything is hand-held, straw-sipped or bag-fed. And more speculatively, I wonder about what would eventually be done on the moon, on a permanent base, in a bit more gravity.

[Vickie Kloeris]

No physical disasters with food. We did, however, have a crew that was careless with the residual drops of beverage left in the beverage straws. Apparently they stained the front of some of the mid-deck lockers with tropical punch which didn't make the orbiter processing folks too happy. We have had products that have been less successful than others. There has never been a product that everyone hated. As I think I mentioned in one of the other responses, if there is a product that some astronaut says he/she hates, you can bet another astronaut will say it's there favorite. During my tenure we have eliminated graham crackers from the permanent menu...just too many crumbs. We also developed a custom thermostabilized fish product using a tomato based sauce thinking that the sauce would help reduce the fishy odor. Wrong....apparently the chemisty of the tomato sauce made it worse. We don't plan on making another lot of that product.