1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,400 To help find new ways to make food in space more acceptable, NASA scientists began experimenting 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:09,720 with new types of food, new packaging, and new processing procedures. 3 00:00:09,720 --> 00:00:14,280 To help us understand how food is now prepared and packaged for spaceflight, Tonya St. Romaine 4 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:24,760 spoke with Connie Erkley at Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA Johnson Space Center. 5 00:00:24,760 --> 00:00:28,040 Food plays a very important role in everyone's life. 6 00:00:28,040 --> 00:00:32,880 We all have a comfort food or a favorite food that helps us get through those stressful 7 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:33,880 days. 8 00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:39,320 But many of us also have foods that we find objectionable, for cultural reasons or simply 9 00:00:39,320 --> 00:00:41,040 for the way it tastes. 10 00:00:41,040 --> 00:00:45,320 This is true for astronauts in space as well as for us down here on Earth. 11 00:00:45,320 --> 00:00:50,120 But in the confines of a spacecraft, your food choices are somewhat limited. 12 00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:55,000 Because food is much more than just sustenance, affecting our mental happiness as well as 13 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,920 our physical abilities, NASA researchers have worked hard to prepare meals that astronauts 14 00:00:59,920 --> 00:01:01,720 look forward to eating. 15 00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:06,520 But space is a unique environment, so the food not only has to taste good, it also has 16 00:01:06,520 --> 00:01:11,360 to have a long shelf life, it has to be able to be stowed effectively, and it has to be 17 00:01:11,360 --> 00:01:14,360 able to withstand the rigors of space. 18 00:01:14,360 --> 00:01:19,760 To help us understand exactly what goes into preparing food for space, I spoke with Connie 19 00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:25,600 Eartley in the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center. 20 00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:28,840 Food for the astronauts has changed extensively over the years. 21 00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:34,520 The days of mercury are certainly gone, cubes and tubes are no more. 22 00:01:34,520 --> 00:01:39,120 Astronauts eat a food system that's very similar to what they eat here on Earth. 23 00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:43,040 It's very familiar, all kinds of food items. 24 00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:49,080 They can eat steak, shrimp cocktail, chocolate pudding cake, you name it, they eat all kinds 25 00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:50,080 of food. 26 00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:55,320 Here we have peanut cubes and sugar cookie cubes, how do you eat these? 27 00:01:55,320 --> 00:02:00,120 Well again, these are from very early in the space program, and so these, literally, these 28 00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:04,720 packages would be cut open, they would put these cubes in their mouth and consume them. 29 00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:09,120 These are one of the not so appetizing things, and this is how far our food has advanced. 30 00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:12,080 The only thing that they have now that they just cut open and pop in their mouth would 31 00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:16,400 be something like candy coated peanuts or cookies or something like that. 32 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:24,520 The rest of these food items, rehydratables have to be rehydrated and heated before consumed. 33 00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:29,960 These types of food items, they also are heated before they are consumed, and they're just 34 00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:34,720 simply, pouches are cut open with a pair of scissors and the astronauts eat right out 35 00:02:34,720 --> 00:02:38,840 of it with regular utensils, so it's just like eating at home. 36 00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:41,920 Providing an acceptable food system is very important to us. 37 00:02:41,920 --> 00:02:46,560 Food fills a psychological need for the astronauts, so we take our jobs very seriously when we 38 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:51,400 work to provide nutritious and tasty foods for the astronauts. 39 00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:57,080 So visual aspects of food is very important, as is taste. 40 00:02:57,080 --> 00:03:01,600 Food has to taste and look good for someone to want to eat it, so we take that very seriously. 41 00:03:01,600 --> 00:03:07,320 We've changed that from the beginning days, from tubes and cubes, and we provide things 42 00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:12,160 from tomatoes and eggplant and butterscotch pudding, all the way to peanut butter and 43 00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:13,380 cinnamon rolls. 44 00:03:13,380 --> 00:03:17,720 When developing, we don't just have something that meets the astronaut's nutritional needs, 45 00:03:17,720 --> 00:03:21,640 it has to look good and taste good, and when they open a pouch, you want them to smell, 46 00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:24,920 oh, that smells just like meatloaf and that takes me home. 47 00:03:24,920 --> 00:03:27,520 Connie, how many items are in the menu? 48 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:34,000 We have over 250 different food items on our food list, a huge variety of foods. 49 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:36,640 All of these foods are shelf-stable food items. 50 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:39,560 They do not need to be refrigerated or frozen. 51 00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:42,280 That is the driving factor in our food system. 52 00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:44,800 We have free-stripe foods. 53 00:03:44,800 --> 00:03:49,240 Free-stripe foods make up a big portion of the food system, specifically on the space 54 00:03:49,240 --> 00:03:50,240 shuttle. 55 00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:53,480 They are foods that have had the moisture removed, and before they can be consumed, 56 00:03:53,480 --> 00:03:57,960 they have to add water, add it back to them, and the labels on the food give the astronauts 57 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:01,320 instructions on how to rehydrate the food properly. 58 00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:04,820 This is our most favorite dish, shrimp cocktail. 59 00:04:04,820 --> 00:04:09,140 We add three ounces of cold water from the galley, and you can see the little rotary 60 00:04:09,140 --> 00:04:13,300 dial where you select the amount of water, and you see two switches. 61 00:04:13,300 --> 00:04:15,580 The yellow is the hot and the blue is the cold. 62 00:04:15,580 --> 00:04:21,700 Then you kind of squish the water into the shrimps and wait about ten minutes for the 63 00:04:21,700 --> 00:04:27,500 shrimp to totally rehydrate, and it actually comes together and forms a nice sauce. 64 00:04:27,500 --> 00:04:33,380 Now, on Earth, you might eat with a knife, spoon, and fork, and fork in space, scissors 65 00:04:33,380 --> 00:04:39,580 and a spoon is all you need, and we use the scissors to open up the food tray, and one 66 00:04:39,580 --> 00:04:43,380 of the features of all of our food is it has a lot of heavy sauce, which kind of holds 67 00:04:43,380 --> 00:04:49,860 it together, and then we just use our spoon, and because of the sauce, it doesn't float 68 00:04:49,860 --> 00:04:50,860 away. 69 00:04:50,860 --> 00:04:51,860 The surface tension holds it there. 70 00:04:51,860 --> 00:04:52,860 It's real nice. 71 00:04:52,860 --> 00:04:56,860 Okay, so we have a little Italian vegetables here, but we've got chicken. 72 00:04:56,860 --> 00:05:01,500 How do you not need to refrigerate the chicken salad? 73 00:05:01,500 --> 00:05:06,780 Because the moisture has been removed in the food, that's what renders it shelf-stable. 74 00:05:06,780 --> 00:05:10,900 There is nothing there that would spoil. 75 00:05:10,900 --> 00:05:15,460 When you add water to these, do they grow, do the sizes grow like a sponge? 76 00:05:15,460 --> 00:05:16,460 Slightly. 77 00:05:16,460 --> 00:05:21,460 There is a vacuum on all of these packages, so all the oxygen has been removed from the 78 00:05:21,460 --> 00:05:25,140 package, and that also helps extend its shelf life. 79 00:05:25,140 --> 00:05:29,900 Water is introduced through this septum, and it does fill out this pouch. 80 00:05:29,900 --> 00:05:32,900 This actual portion won't expand. 81 00:05:32,900 --> 00:05:38,900 The pouch will expand a little bit once that moisture is introduced, but this is the actual 82 00:05:38,900 --> 00:05:39,900 size. 83 00:05:39,900 --> 00:05:44,220 Freeze-drying removes the water, but doesn't disrupt the cellular integrity of the food, 84 00:05:44,220 --> 00:05:47,680 so you can add water back, and you get exactly what you started with. 85 00:05:47,680 --> 00:05:49,500 This isn't a condensed version. 86 00:05:49,500 --> 00:05:52,100 It's just literally just missing the water. 87 00:05:52,100 --> 00:05:54,060 And the portion sizes are fairly small. 88 00:05:54,060 --> 00:05:55,460 Why do you keep them that way? 89 00:05:55,460 --> 00:05:58,460 Things do look small, and that is one of the questions that we get often, but when you're 90 00:05:58,460 --> 00:06:04,580 actually weighing food and giving what is a recommended serving size, they tend to 91 00:06:04,580 --> 00:06:06,580 be smaller than what the average person considers. 92 00:06:06,580 --> 00:06:09,420 So you can't do the biggie size in space. 93 00:06:09,420 --> 00:06:10,420 No supersize. 94 00:06:10,420 --> 00:06:11,420 That's right. 95 00:06:11,420 --> 00:06:12,900 And so there are no leftovers. 96 00:06:12,900 --> 00:06:14,020 That's very important. 97 00:06:14,020 --> 00:06:18,260 What they do have in a serving size, they do need to consume it, because what they don't 98 00:06:18,260 --> 00:06:23,340 consume out of a package, that becomes trash, and that becomes something that has to be 99 00:06:23,340 --> 00:06:26,020 maintained, and not to mention, it could smell. 100 00:06:26,020 --> 00:06:29,900 If you don't eat an entire, say you're eating tuna fish, and you don't eat an entire package 101 00:06:29,900 --> 00:06:33,700 of tuna fish, that's a smell you're going to have to live with for a long time. 102 00:06:33,700 --> 00:06:37,740 So it's to your advantage to consume the entire contents of the package. 103 00:06:37,740 --> 00:06:38,740 And this is interesting. 104 00:06:38,740 --> 00:06:41,260 There's a cinnamon roll in here. 105 00:06:41,260 --> 00:06:42,960 There is a cinnamon roll in here. 106 00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:45,580 This is an extended shelf life bread product. 107 00:06:45,580 --> 00:06:50,700 It also lasts at room temperature for a couple of years, which is very different from most 108 00:06:50,700 --> 00:06:55,060 of the bread products you can think of, because bread molds in a couple of weeks. 109 00:06:55,060 --> 00:07:00,260 This has been formulated so that the water activity, which is the amount of free moisture 110 00:07:00,260 --> 00:07:04,900 that would be available to microbes if they were present, this has been lowered so much 111 00:07:04,900 --> 00:07:08,580 that if there was anything present, it couldn't spoil the product. 112 00:07:08,580 --> 00:07:11,620 This is one of the older, you were saying, it's come a long way. 113 00:07:11,620 --> 00:07:14,260 There aren't cans as much anymore, is that correct? 114 00:07:14,260 --> 00:07:15,260 That's right. 115 00:07:15,260 --> 00:07:18,200 We have moved away from the can. 116 00:07:18,200 --> 00:07:19,980 We have very few items that are in cans right now. 117 00:07:19,980 --> 00:07:22,580 Off the top of my head, I can think of about three or four. 118 00:07:22,580 --> 00:07:25,980 We have moved to the pouch. 119 00:07:25,980 --> 00:07:28,780 These foods are thermally processed. 120 00:07:28,780 --> 00:07:34,620 It's another word for canned food, or we also call it retorting. 121 00:07:34,620 --> 00:07:39,340 And the food inside of this container has been heat treated so that the food is what 122 00:07:39,340 --> 00:07:42,220 is called commercially sterile. 123 00:07:42,220 --> 00:07:44,980 We use this pouch for several reasons. 124 00:07:44,980 --> 00:07:47,580 This is a technology from the military. 125 00:07:47,580 --> 00:07:51,940 This is what looks like their meal-ready-to-eat packages. 126 00:07:51,940 --> 00:07:54,340 These are our formulations in these packages. 127 00:07:54,340 --> 00:08:01,540 And the pouch is great because, one, when processing, it's not so rigid like this can. 128 00:08:01,540 --> 00:08:06,300 And in order to heat treat this can, you might end up over-processing the food item. 129 00:08:06,300 --> 00:08:10,260 In this pouch, which is nice and flat and uniform, products don't get over-processed, 130 00:08:10,260 --> 00:08:13,180 so you end up with a high-quality food item. 131 00:08:13,180 --> 00:08:16,500 Also, what's really nice is they stow very efficiently. 132 00:08:16,500 --> 00:08:22,340 This pouch takes up a lot less room than a bulky, rigid can, so we can stow more food 133 00:08:22,340 --> 00:08:28,420 items much more efficiently and use our container space as best that we can. 134 00:08:28,420 --> 00:08:31,740 And then last, it's a means of trash management. 135 00:08:31,740 --> 00:08:33,380 A can, again, is very bulky. 136 00:08:33,380 --> 00:08:35,300 You have an empty can to deal with in the trash. 137 00:08:35,300 --> 00:08:37,020 It takes up a lot of space. 138 00:08:37,020 --> 00:08:43,220 This just folds completely flat, and you can store a lot of empty pouches in a lot less 139 00:08:43,220 --> 00:08:45,700 space than you can store bulky cans. 140 00:08:45,700 --> 00:08:46,700 The drinks. 141 00:08:46,700 --> 00:08:49,260 All of our beverages are powdered. 142 00:08:49,260 --> 00:08:52,340 All of them come in this type of package. 143 00:08:52,340 --> 00:08:57,620 They also have a label, which tells them the name of the product, plus how much moisture 144 00:08:57,620 --> 00:09:00,780 needs to be added to the product before consuming. 145 00:09:00,780 --> 00:09:05,140 What's unique about this is you have to have a special straw to consume this beverage. 146 00:09:05,140 --> 00:09:08,460 And this straw is inserted into this package. 147 00:09:08,460 --> 00:09:12,760 It actually opens up a septum, which it opens up a one-way valve. 148 00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:17,560 So in microgravity, liquid's wanting to come right out of the straw, so we have a clamp 149 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:19,360 on the straw to keep the liquid in. 150 00:09:19,360 --> 00:09:23,520 And then when the astronauts are ready to consume, they release the clamp, the liquid 151 00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:26,920 flows into their mouth, they have to clamp it off, and then they have to remember that 152 00:09:26,920 --> 00:09:31,200 above the clamp, they need to get that liquid out, too, or else they've got some free liquid 153 00:09:31,200 --> 00:09:32,760 floating around. 154 00:09:32,760 --> 00:09:36,080 And the astronauts are encouraged to keep their fluid intake up. 155 00:09:36,080 --> 00:09:39,520 It's very easy to forget to drink in space, and so they're encouraged to do that often, 156 00:09:39,520 --> 00:09:42,960 and they have plenty of drinks to keep them very well hydrated. 157 00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:48,200 We also offer every combination of coffee and tea that you could imagine, so they have 158 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:50,680 a wide selection to choose from. 159 00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:55,360 But I say before you get the M&Ms, they have to eat their spinach. 160 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:57,000 In a perfect world, you would. 161 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:03,320 We do plan minis for all of the astronauts so that their nutritional needs are met, but 162 00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,440 when it comes down to it, when they get ready to eat in space, they eat what they want to 163 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:08,440 eat. 164 00:10:08,680 --> 00:10:13,080 We'll find out why all the food flown into space has special cooking instructions, but 165 00:10:13,080 --> 00:10:17,640 first, did you know that the Space Shuttle Discovery took its name from Captain Robert 166 00:10:17,640 --> 00:10:20,800 Scott's famous Antarctic Exploration Vessel? 167 00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:27,960 The RRS Discovery was built in 1901, designed specifically for an extended Antarctic expedition. 168 00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:32,080 Because the vessel would be in Antarctica for over two years, it was required to carry 169 00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:36,880 enough food and equipment to support the 40-man crew until she could be resupplied. 170 00:10:36,920 --> 00:10:42,920 With about 35,000 pounds of preserved meats and another 42,000 pounds of flour, the Discovery 171 00:10:42,920 --> 00:10:47,280 left for Antarctica on August 6th, 1901. 172 00:10:47,280 --> 00:10:51,480 Although there was a large supply of food aboard, the crew would also hunt seals and 173 00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:56,000 penguins, which helped prevent a common ailment of the time, scurvy. 174 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:02,080 The Discovery returned from Antarctica on September 10th, 1904, and in 1986 was opened 175 00:11:02,080 --> 00:11:04,280 to the public as a museum ship. 176 00:11:04,280 --> 00:11:07,200 It is now permanently moored in Dundee, Scotland.