The Space Kitchen of the Future

[adoxograph]

If there is follow through for Bush's space plan we'll see the retirement of the shuttle and the completion of the ISS. Moving on to the next step, then, what would you like to see in future shuttle craft kitchen capabilities, or on more permanent space settlements? If you could do everything you would like, what would your Kitchen of the Future include?

[Vickie Kloeris]

First and foremost, refrigerators and freezers for food. The nutritional quality, variety and acceptability of our food system could be increased significantly if we had refrigeration/freezing available. Beyond that, if we decide to grow foods in a colony on the moon or Mars we would need a lot of food processing equipment and cooking equipment that we don't have. We really don't do any cooking currently...just add water and/or reheat. For the journey to Mars you probably would want to add at least some recreational cooking...like baking cookies or some such...for morale purposes. Psychology of foods will be really important, especially if the trip is 6 months each way as is currently forecast.