Sex, Bombs and Burgers

by Peter Nowak

  Still, it’s hard to forget that William Shockley was indirectly responsible for many of the toys and gadgets we love today; and without him Silicon Valley might not exist.

  War Becomes “Freaking Cool”

  For decades, sociologists and psychologists have argued that violent video games and war-related toys such as G.I. Joe (made possible through the Barbie miniaturization pioneered by Mattel) are a deliberate form of psychological brainwashing, designed by the military-industrial complex to give boys a favourable attitude toward the armed forces. Others have suggested that a child’s predilection toward war toys is hard-wired into the brain and develops from a sense of self-preservation where “instinctive animal play is practice for survival: the kitten’s ball of yarn is tomorrow’s mouse.”36 Playing with war toys, in other words, might prepare young children for the struggles they will face as they grow older. Still others have dismissed it simply as a “macho thing.”

  Me? As a kid I just really liked running around the forest and getting dirty, and I thought G.I. Joe was the coolest toy around, slightly ahead of Transformers. As I got older and my taste in toys became more sophisticated, I was attracted to video games. Like millions of other kids (and adults), I found them to be a great form of interactive entertainment.

  Historically, the toy and games market has provided a muchneeded creative, commercial and intellectual outlet for many military inventors and designers. Silly Putty and the Slinky, for example, were products of last-resort thinking, inventions with no practical use that were repurposed into playthings that turned out to be commercial sensations. In Jack Ryan’s case, Mattel provided the promise of fame and fortune as well as the canvas on which he could practise his technical creativity, attractions that building missiles at Raytheon just didn’t offer. William Higinbotham, for his part, was driven to demonstrate that his work could not only destroy the world, but could also enlighten and perhaps even entertain it.

  Recognition was also a main motivator for all of these inventors. Because of their military associations, they often had to conceal their work for security reasons. The Slinky and Tennis for Two were highly publicized, unlike the many other projects that Richard James and Higinbotham could not talk about. Scientists and engineers dream about toys and games because they are tangible examples of their work—products they can point to on a store shelf and show to their family or friends. As Ralph Baer says, “If you work at Sanders on a program for five years, it ends up as a box in an F7 fighter and nobody knows what you’re doing because it’s all classified. And even if you can show it off, it’s usually a grey box. Toys and games are an attractive place to be.”

  The evolution of these toys has had a profound impact on how war is conducted. In its thirty-plus years of existence, the video-game market has mushroomed into an $18-billion industry; in 2007 it eclipsed the total revenue brought in by the movie business.37 The military, for its part, has steadily stepped up its use of video games in training. In 2010 a new video game unit of the U.S. Army, for example, will have $50 million to spend to watch trends in the industry and identify technology that can be used to train soldiers.38 Video games are also being used in recruitment, enticing potential soldiers with the allure of living out Xbox and Playstation war titles such as Call of Duty or Ghost Recon in real life. In 2009 the Air Force rolled out a sleek new website featuring interactive video games that allowed visitors to re-enact an actual A-10 Thunderbolt mission in Afghanistan, fly a Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle in Iraq or even refuel a plane in mid-air.

  The technological development has come full circle— while many toys and games began as offshoots of military technology, they are now influencing and changing that same technology. When soldiers using Foster-Miller bomb-disposal robots complained that the dual-knob control system was too complicated to learn, the company redesigned it to use an Xbox controller. The same went for iRobot’s PackBot, which now uses a PlayStation controller. During a visit to iRobot’s headquarters near Boston, I got to test-drive a PackBot, the company’s own bomb disposer. Having grown up on video games, I had the machine mastered within minutes; I couldn’t believe how easy it was to control.

  The military knows its recruits today are video-game junkies, familiar not just with the technology but also with the violent themes, and it exploits this. “The Army will draw on a generation of mind-nimble (not necessarily literate), fingerquick youth and their years of experience as heroes and killers in violent, virtually real interactive videos,” says one military journal.39

  Video games are now providing playtime training to future troops, and those future troops don’t even know it. This is dramatically changing new soldiers’ views toward fighting wars, and not necessarily in a good way. The sociologists and psychologists who have argued that violent video games are desensitizing people to real-world violence may just be right, at least when it comes to the actual fighting of wars. As one young air force lieutenant described coordinating unmanned air strikes in Iraq, “It’s like a video game, the ability to kill. It’s like ... freaking cool.”40

  5

  FOOD FROM THE HEAVENS

  The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a

  good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as

  possible, to the participants.1

  —ROMAN GENERAL AEMILIUS PAULUS

  Does smelly, fermented cabbage sound tasty to you? Better get used to it, because in a few years we could all be chowing down on South Korea’s national dish, kimchee.

  The food, eaten by South Koreans with virtually every meal, made its debut on the International Space Station in 2008, much to the delight of the country’s first astronaut, Ko San. “When you’re working in space-like conditions and aren’t feeling too well, you miss Korean food,” he said.2 No kidding. To South Koreans, kimchee is comfort food and a cultural touchstone akin to pasta for Italians, apple pie for Americans or Spam for Pacific Islanders. Many South Koreans attribute their country’s dramatic economic rise over the past few decades to the invigorating powers of the cabbage dish. And while Westerners say “cheese” when posing for photos, South Koreans smile and shout, “kimcheeee!”3 Even we Canadians don’t get that excited about our poutine.

  Traditionally, kimchee was prepared in early winter, when large clay pots filled with cabbage, seasonings and other vegetables were buried underground to ferment. Today the process is more advanced and kimchee can simply be bought at the grocery store, then kept in a special refrigerator that regulates fermentation. South Koreans eat it by the truckload, about 1.6 million tonnes a year, or more than eighty kilograms per household.4 Few non-Asians have even heard of kimchee, let alone tried it, because it doesn’t travel well. The cabbage dish is full of microbes that help in the fermentation process, which means it has a short shelf life and is difficult to export. South Koreans abroad often find themselves missing their favourite food.

  That looks to change with the work done by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Scientists there found they could expand kimchee’s shelf life by blasting it with radiation, which kills the bacteria after fermentation. The process also neutralizes some of the smell, which non-Koreans often find revolting. The result is “space kimchee,” a safer, longer-lasting and less-pungent version of the earthly dish, ideal for consumption up in orbit. More importantly, the new creation will also have terrestrial uses, food scientists say. “During our research, we found a way to slow down the fermentation of kimchee for a month so that it can be shipped around the world at less cost,” said Lee Ju-woon at the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, which began working on the food for the space agency in 2003. “This will help globalize kimchee.”5

  Eating Humble Pie

  New-and-improved kimchee is the latest in a long line of food innovations to come out of various space programs. Exploring worlds beyond this one has meant overcoming a whole new set of technological obstacles, starting with launching humans out of the
Earth’s atmosphere. As we’ve ventured deeper, and as we’ve asked our spacefarers to leave their home planet for longer, the challenges of keeping them fed and healthy have become more complex. Space agencies have spent decades and millions of dollars in meeting these challenges, not just to keep astronauts and cosmonauts nourished, but also to provide them with a level of comfort so that they can concentrate on performing their scientific missions.

  These investments, as is the hope with kimchee, have also paid dividends many times over back on Earth. In many instances, space agencies, particularly NASA, have transferred their technologies—whether new forms of packaging, processes or food chemistry—directly to consumer food companies, which in turn have used the advances to improve products. In some situations, food makers have developed their own intellectual property by working with the agencies, while in others whole new categories—such as, blech, camping food—have come straight out of space research. For much of the past fifty years, NASA and its kin have done as much to change the quality, cost and safety of food as the biggest terrestrial processors.

  The whole notion of space travel traces its origins back to the military. While today we think of space exploration as a purely scientific endeavour and the ultimate example of international co-operation, that was definitely not the case in the early days of the Cold War.

  At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union was at a big military disadvantage to the United States. Not only did the Americans have the atomic bomb, they had also recruited the best German scientists and engineers and a good number of the V-2 rockets the Germans had built during the war. Through the late forties, the U.S. Army quickly transformed the Nazi V-2 program, which was responsible for more than 2,500 deaths in Allied countries and a further 20,000 in German concentration camps, into its own space and missile programs.6 As the fifties dawned, Americans were brimming with confidence—their country’s clear technological superiority meant a safe and prosperous future lay ahead. A journey into space was merely a matter of when, not if.

  On October 4, 1957, however, Americans had to eat a generous helping of humble pie (it was probably appleflavoured) when the Soviet Union, using its own Germancaptured technology and know-how, launched the first-ever man-made satellite, Sputnik I, into space. Despite its head start, the United States had got caught with its figurative pants down because of internal squabbles over funding and which branch of the military should have control over the space program. The surprise sent the American government and public into a tizzy.

  In the fifties, launching rockets into space wasn’t about who could venture farthest from Earth, but rather who could land nuclear weapons closest to their enemy. The Soviet Union had developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, but until Sputnik, the American government wasn’t terribly worried. Bomb-laden Soviet planes, while potentially deadly, could be detected and shot down well before they reached American territory. V-2 rockets, meanwhile, were only capable of making short flights, like from East Germany to the United Kingdom. No one knew yet how to fire a nuclear missile from one continent to another.

  All of a sudden, the Soviet Union possessed that ability— and could wipe out the United States with the push of a button. The same, however, was not true in reverse. For the first time in their country’s history, the American people were faced with the very real possibility of annihilation by a technological superior. The doomsday clock neared midnight and the Cold War shifted to a new level of urgency.

  President Eisenhower ordered the formation of two agencies, the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to ensure that the United States would never again be surprised on a technological level. We’ll take a look at ARPA, which soon added “Defense” to its name to become DARPA, in chapter seven. NASA, meanwhile, was to be a civilian-run agency in charge of all aspects of space exploration and long-term aerospace defence research. The civilian veneer was designed to give the United States a sense of moral high ground over the secretive Soviet program, but there was little doubt that for much of the Cold War, the main motive behind any country’s space program was to establish military superiority and hang the threat of nuclear annihilation over one’s enemies, whether through rocket technology or espionage capability. That’s why seven of the nine countries that have so far developed nuclear weapons (eight out of ten if you count Iran) have also launched rockets into space. It also explains why there is so much current concern over North Korea’s attempts to shoot rockets into orbit.7

  In 1961, before NASA and DARPA could get up to functional speed, the Soviet Union again beat the United States to the punch by making cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first man in space. NASA countered the following year by launching John Glenn who, during his five-hour-and-fifteen-minute flight, became the first human to eat in space while he was in orbit halfway between Australia and Hawaii. “I lifted the visor of my helmet and ate for the first time, squeezing some applesauce from a toothpaste-like tube into my mouth to see if weightlessness interfered with swallowing,” Glenn wrote in his biography. “It didn’t.”8 And so began the era of space food.

  And the Bland Played On

  Aside from the two T-38 Talon jets on display outside its main gate, there is little to distinguish the Johnson Space Center from any other American government research facility. The complex, consisting of a hundred or so buildings sprawled out over 650 hectares south of Houston, looks very much like a college campus. The rectangular low-rise buildings, linked by a grid of narrow, tree-lined roads, could conceivably house students learning socio-political theory or business administration. Instead, they’re occupied by some of the sharpest brains around— scientists devoted to preparing humans for leaving Earth.

  The only way for non-genius scientists to get past the guards at the front gate is to take a tour from Space Center Houston, the public visitors’ building across the street, appropriately named Saturn Lane. After checking out garish, Disney-like displays of shuttle cockpits and moon rocks, visitors can ride a tram into NASA’s facility to catch a glimpse of the agency’s inner workings. Highlights of the tour include a visit to the sixties-era main control room, which was used during the Apollo program and now—with its push-button consoles, vacuum tubes and monochrome projector screens—looks like a kitschy set from the original Star Trek series. Visitors also get to see the cavernous training centre, where astronauts prepare for missions by working inside full-scale replicas of the shuttle and space station modules.

  Not on the tour, likely because it’s nowhere near as sexy, is Building Seventeen: NASA’s food lab. Here a dozen scientists dissect, formulate, test and create foods for consumption by astronauts on shuttle missions, the International Space Station and, perhaps soon, journeys to the moon and Mars. The main testing area looks like a cross between a cafeteria and a bachelor pad, with a large dining table set a few feet away from a kitchen counter. Various packaged foods are chaotically strewn across the room. A box-shaped contraption, like the automated detergent dispensers found in coin laundries, sits at the end of the table. Dr. Michele Perchonok, NASA’s food system manager, greeted me with a smile when I visited and revealed that the box was indeed an oven used on the space shuttle. My previous experiences with so-called space food amounted to eating the tasteless freeze-dried strawberries and ice-cream sandwiches sold at museum gift shops. I just couldn’t believe that was what astronauts really ate, so I had to find out for myself.9

  Perchonok served up a plate of beef brisket, accompanied by baked beans, cauliflower and cheese, mixed berries, cookies and, to wash it all down, a pineapple drink. I’d heard from talking to astronauts that the brisket was good, and it was indeed fantastic—the beef strips, flavoured with tasty Texas barbecue sauce, were so tender that they seemed to melt in my mouth. The beans also had a nice smoky flavour while the cauliflower with cheese, despite looking like an unappetizing yellow blob, was savoury too. I wasn’t so thrilled with the berries, which were tart and lumpy, and the pineapple drin
k was the sort of run-ofthe-mill powdered stuff you get at the grocery store. Still, the meal far exceeded my expectations. I was ready for total chemical blandness, the kind you get with pouched camping foods, but instead I got a meal that would pass muster in a decent restaurant. (NASA’s brisket was actually on par with a plate I had later that night at the Goode Company Barbeque, a renowned Houston eatery.)10 None of this was news to Perchonok, of course. “Mmm hmm,” was all she said as I praised her cooking. Space food, which today is a mix of freeze-dried, dehydrated and irradiated products, has come a long way from applesauce in a tube.

  NASA began developing its own food with the start of the Apollo program in 1961. With the goal of landing on the moon, Apollo missions would obviously be longer than the short Mercury and Gemini jaunts, so astronauts would need to eat. (Apollo 7, the first manned mission in the program, orbited the Earth for eleven days, while Apollo 15, the longest of the Apollo missions, clocked in at twelve and a half.) The problem was, no one really knew what to expect when it came to putting food in space. Microbes might mutate and become harmful, new kinds of bacteria might sprout up or the food might simply rot faster. There was also limited data on the long-term effects of zero gravity on astronauts’ bodies. NASA played it safe and went with the most sterile and bland food it could find. In other words, army food.