Sex, Bombs and Burgers

by Peter Nowak

  As for the food itself, there have been few complaints from those who have actually had to eat it. Canadian astronaut Dave Williams, who went into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in 1998 and then up to the International Space Station for twelve days in 2007, was a big fan of canned Russian space foods such as caviar and borscht. “There are certainly downsides to using a can because once you take the food out you’re left with it. Unless you have a trash compactor, the volume of your trash builds up correspondingly,” he says. “But a number of the foods are spicy, which makes them quite palatable. I was impressed with the juices they had. Instead of being a crystal that gets water added to it, these were real fruit juices. It was remarkable to get to have those.”27

  Where Russia definitely lost out, though, is in the benefits of repurposing technology. Russian space historians say that during the Soviet era, the nation’s space program was the least commercialized in the world. The Soviet Union didn’t readily share its technology with industry, and industry didn’t exactly beat a path to the space agency. One beaming example of this was the poor state of Soviet communications satellites, or “comsats,” which had considerably shorter lifespans than their American counterparts—as little as two years, compared to the typical seven to ten for an American satellite. “For the USSR, the commercial imperatives were weaker and the competition non-existent: there were few incentives to build longer-lasting comsats,” one historian explains.28

  The situation wasn’t helped by dramatic funding cuts after the fall of communism, with the space program losing about 80 percent of its budget between 1989 and 1999, making it one of the worst-funded in the world.29 Russia’s 2006 space budget—estimated at two billion euros—was, for example, a drop in the bucket compared to the 29 billion euros spent by the United States.30 The country has also been late to the game in developing ties between its space program and private industry, only opening its Russian Technology Transfer Center in 2000, forty years after NASA did the same. “Such activities have never been organized in Russia before ... the creation of RTTC will considerably facilitate export of technologies from the Russian Federation by making this process more organized,” the centre’s director said in 2000. “RTTC specialists have studied very thoroughly the U.S. experience and legislation in the field of technology transfer. In fact, RTTC has been modelled after U.S. regional technology-transfer centres, particularly after the Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization of the Johnson Space Center.”31

  Indeed, it took the arrival of Western fast-food companies to begin the process of modernizing Russia’s food supply. McDonald’s, which led the way, found the country’s food system deplorable. “In Moscow, we had explored all sorts of meat plants and dairies and bakeries and had found that they weren’t up to our standards,” said McDonald’s Canada president George Cohon, who spearheaded the company’s move into Russia. “Nothing was easy. In the USSR of the late 1980s, the simplest things became logistical headaches. Could we get our bags from the Soviet Union? Could we get our napkins? Could we get our drinking straws? Even—could we get enough sand and gravel for construction? Could we get enough electric power?”32

  McDonald’s executives found that Russia and other parts of Europe were “light years” behind the United States in terms of food production. “The U.S. was twenty-five years ahead of many of our foreign markets in every aspect of food production— growing, production, distribution,” one said.33 (Energy, at least, didn’t turn out to be a problem as McDonald’s managed to get the Red Army to lay power cables for its new $40 million “McComplex” food processing plant.)34

  Even after McDonald’s laid down its roots in the early nineties and began overhauling Russia’s food system—which included investing in farmers’ equipment, irrigation, soil, transportation and distribution networks, not to mention the famous importation of potato seeds from the Netherlands—the country’s agricultural system was still in a shambles. In the midnineties officials estimated that about 70 percent of the nation’s farms were on the verge of collapse. Analysts say change has been slow over the past decade and it’ll be many years before the effects of technology—be it imported by foreign firms or developed internally through projects like the space program—will be felt.

  The International Buffet Opens

  Other countries are also lagging considerably behind the United States in their space food programs, although that’s hardly their fault given the virtual American-Russian duopoly on manned space missions for most of the past fifty years. Space exploration only became a truly global endeavour in 1998, when work began on the construction of the International Space Station, which sixteen countries agreed to take part in. With long-duration missions now a possibility for much of the rest of the world, space agencies such as South Korea’s are putting effort and resources into developing their own space food. Before long, they too will reap the sort of technology transfer benefits the United States has seen.

  Japan, for example, only began researching space food technology in 2001. By 2007 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had twenty-eight items, including ramen noodles, green tea and teriyaki mackerel, approved for consumption aboard the ISS. Having Japanese foods aboard the station wasn’t just a point of national pride, it also kept its crew comfortable and happy. “Our Japanese astronauts were concerned about American and Russian foods for the longduration missions because most of these items contain meat and oils. The taste is too strong for us Japanese,” says Shoichi Tachibana, chief of JAXA’s health management team. “They were hoping we’d make some light-tasting foods. These light-tasting foods are good for the stomach.”35 Japanese scientists are now working on some more traditional national foods, including tofu and fermented beans, in the hopes of making them more shelf-stable and suitable for export, much like space kimchee.

  India has perhaps the biggest head start, having launched air force pilot Rakesh Sharma into orbit through a joint Indo-Soviet mission in 1984. The Defence Food Research Laboratory, India’s answer to Natick, used its expertise in developing military foods to supply Sharma with a variety of items, including curries, fruit juices, chapatis and chicken biryani. DFRL then offered its menu to NASA, which chose thirteen items for the Space Shuttle Challenger launch in 1986. Like NASA and Natick, India’s military food lab transferred its technology, including its own version of the retort pouch, to local food producers, who have used it to export Indian products around the world. Western supermarkets today are full of Indian curries and rice dishes in retort pouches under brands such as Ashoka and Tasty Bite. Some of the packages even have labels that read, “Technology developed by Defence Food Research Laboratory, Ministry of Defence, Mysore, India.”

  With India now eyeing a manned moon mission, it is quickly ramping up food technology research, which is also becoming a national priority because of the country’s bewildering economic growth. With more and more Indians finding work every day, the country is mirroring what happened in the United States in the fifties, when ordinary people found less and less time to prepare fresh meals. “That necessitates the use of processed foods,” says DFRL director Dr. Amrinder Singh Bawa. “They don’t have much time to spend in the kitchen.”36

  China, which in 2003 became only the third country to launch its own manned space mission, is also devoting resources to space food technology. In 2007 the Scientific Research and Training Center for Chinese Astronauts made several items from its menu of sixty space-worthy foods, including chocolates and other desserts, available through grocery stores. Chinese experiments with fruit and vegetable seeds in zero gravity, meanwhile, have also returned some surprising results. When returned to Earth, the cultivated seeds have turned into giant fruits and vegetables with higher than normal vitamin content, a phenomenon that researchers say could solve the world’s food problems. “Conventional agricultural development has taken us as far as we can go and demand for food from a growing population is endless,” Chinese scientists say. “Space seeds offer the o
pportunity to grow fruit and vegetables bigger and faster.”37

  With food processing taking off in both countries, India and China are seeing a rapid influx of Western fast-food restaurants. Chains including McDonald’s and KFC are seeing the same sort of growth in these new markets as they did in North America during the fifties and sixties. In 2004 there were fifty McDonald’s restaurants in India and 600 in China; five years later there were 160 and 1,050, respectively. KFC had only thirty-four restaurants in India by 2009, but it dwarfs McDonald’s in China with 1,900 restaurants, nearly doubling from 1,000 five years earlier.38

  Pioneer Life in Space

  If the current direction being taken by Natick and NASA is any indication, the future of food may ironically lie in less processing, not more. A technique Natick developed in the nineties using highly pressurized water and microwaves to cook and stabilize foods is now starting to catch on. The process involves sticking retort-pouched foods into a big drum, then adding water until the pressure inside builds to more than eighty thousand pounds per square inch. That kills off the micro-organisms in the food in about five minutes, whereas previous steam methods took over an hour. Again, shorter processing times means the food retains more of its natural taste, texture and nutrients, so fewer additives are needed afterward. Major food processors got their education on the technology through contracts with the military and are now starting to implement it. Texas-based Fresherized Foods was the first to have a hit with the process, using it to create its successful line of Wholly Guacamole dips. Even Spam maker Hormel is using the so-called “TrueTaste” technology in its preservative-free Natural Choice line of meats.

  NASA, meanwhile, is now thinking about how to feed astronauts on a Mars mission. Such a trip will require food that has a shelf life of five years, significantly longer than most exist-ing products (with the possible exception of the indestructible Spam). Then there’s the problem of all that weight and waste: NASA’s Perchonok estimates that sending six people on a thousand-day mission will require nearly ten thousand kilograms of food, with more than 10 percent of that coming back as waste. “That may not be the most efficient way of doing things,” she says. One likely solution is to send processing back in time and have crews grow the majority of their food in space. “It would be a gourmet kitchen, but with an 1800s look and feel because you wouldn’t be able to go to the grocery store and get your grated carrots. You’d have to grate them by hand or by food processor.” There you have it: the future of food processing is a cheese grater.

  6

  THE NAKED EYE GOES

  ELECTRONIC

  If the human body’s obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me.1

  —LARRY FLYNT, HUSTLER PUBLISHER

  In the early seventies, Lena Sjööblom never dreamed that there would be such a thing as the internet, let alone that she would be the most important woman in its history. Yet a clock hanging in her living room bears the inscription “Miss Internet of the World,” a title bestowed upon her by adoring fans.2 While the world at large has never heard of Sjööblom, to the people who helped develop the internet in its early, formative years—the imaging community—the former Swedish model is a legend.

  Sjööblom’s rise to geek fame began in 1969, when the vivacious eighteen-year-old native of Järna, a village southwest of Stockholm, set out on an adventure to the United States. Having just completed high school, she had no real plan save for visiting a cousin in Chicago. Once there, she found work as a live-in nanny. The job paid the bills and allowed her to absorb the American culture she had grown up watching on television and in the movies. She spoke English well and had no trouble making friends, including some photographers who were struck by the wholesome brunette, a rarity from a nation known for its beautiful blondes.

  At the time, most photographers in Chicago fell into the orbit of the city’s recently established publishing sensation, Playboy. While Playboy had begun humbly in Hugh Hefner’s living room in 1953, by the early seventies it was one of the biggest magazines in the world, selling an average of 5.5 million copies per issue.3 That circulation clout gave Hefner a commanding position in the local photography market.

  Dwight Hooker, one of Hefner’s mainstays, had already convinced Sjööblom to do some modelling work for catalogues and advertisements. With her laid-back, European attitude to nudity, she didn’t need much prodding to agree to take some test shots for the magazine. For the adventurous Sjööblom, posing nude in Playboy was simply another all-American experience.

  Sjööblom made her splash as the magazine’s Playmate in the November 1972 issue in a pictorial entitled “Swedish Accent.” The five-page photo spread depicted her in various states of undress, but also clothed and socializing with friends and family back in Sweden. In one non-nude photo, Sjööblom strolled past a poker-faced guard at Stockholm’s Royal Palace with her friend Eva; in another she and her family celebrated Midsummer Eve by dancing around a maypole. (Given the pagan nature of the ritual, it probably would have been more appropriate to be naked in that one.) In the accompanying article, she heaped praise on her new homeland and criticized her native country; while the modelling work influenced her decision to stay in the United States, Sjööblom was more attracted to the freedom. “Though I miss my parents and brother very much and Sweden will always be my home, I couldn’t move back unless the government changed,” she said. “The country’s becoming too socialistic for me.”4

  Many previous Playmates had basked in the media attention their magazine appearances drew, but Sjööblom fled the spotlight as soon as it hit her. Shortly after the issue was released she moved to Rochester, New York, to do some low-profile modelling work for Eastman Kodak catalogues. In 1977, with her short-lived Playboy fame faded, Sjööblom ended her American adventure and returned to a quieter life back in Sweden, where she found work as an administrator in the state liquor agency.

  The seeds of her real fame, however, were sprouting in a small laboratory in Los Angeles, where the first significant research on digital image processing was taking place. Scientists at the University of Southern California had been working on transforming print photos into electronic formats since the early sixties, and by the seventies had established the school as a global leader in the field. In 1971 the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense section responsible for the development of new technology, acknowledged that status by giving the university a contract to digitize images so that they could be transmitted across its newly minted communications network, the ARPAnet. Two years earlier military engineers had successfully tested the network, the precursor to the internet, and the Pentagon wanted to put as much data on it as possible, including photos. The university established a proper research facility, the Signal and Image Processing Institute, to tackle this challenge.5 In a time before scanners and other readily available digital technology, SIPI’s mission was daunting.

  SIPI researchers built one of the world’s first digital photo scanners at a cost of $250,000, a sizeable fortune at the time.6 Newspapers and wire services had been using scanners since before the Second World War, but their devices were analogue and captured a much-degraded reflection of the photo. SIPI’s digital scanner converted photos into the ones and zeros of binary code, which made it easier to manipulate them on computers and transmit them over communications networks. Researchers used the machine to scan photos of simple textures such as wood grains and leather, then aerial pictures taken from planes and spy satellites. From there, they moved on to more varied and colourful photos, including shots of trees, houses and jellybeans. The images were scanned and manipulated on computers through the application of algorithmic patterns, which bent, distorted, fragmented, disassembled, reassembled, blurred and sharpened them. By late 1972, however, the researchers were dying for a human face.

  Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the institute, recalls that his team was desperate for a new test image because they “were tire
d of looking at all those other pictures.”7 One team member ran out to the nearest magazine store and picked up the latest Playboy, the fateful Lena issue. The magazine was chosen because it was one of the few publications that had full-colour, high-quality glossy photos— Hugh Hefner insisted on using only the best photography and paper stock to avoid having his product considered a low-end skin rag—and its centrefold was ideal because it was the right size. Photos were wrapped around the scanner’s cylindrical drum, which measured thirteen centimetres by thirteen centimetres. Folded to hide the “naughty bits,” the top third of the centrefold fit perfectly.

  The picture featured a nude Sjööblom standing in front of a full-length mirror, looking back at the viewer over her right shoulder with long brown hair cascading down her back. She wore a floppy hat with a dangling blue feather, a pair of short black boots and stockings, and had a beckoning look in her eyes, punctuated by a mysterious Mona Lisa-like smile. Cropped to show only her head and shoulders, the picture was ideal for image research because it contained a range of colour, had areas that were in and out of focus, and had alternating smooth and detailed sections. The skin tones were flat and simple while the feather on the hat was brimming with detail. It was the perfect candidate for the photo manipulation techniques Sawchuk and his crew had in mind.

  SIPI first distributed the Lena image on tapes to researchers at other universities along with three other test photos: a pair of peppers, a fighter jet in flight and a colourful close-up of a mandrill’s face. Sawchuk and his team, however, didn’t tell anyone where they had found their sexy test subject. The picture was rescanned and finally transmitted over the ARPAnet in 1975.8 At the time, the new field of image research was virtually all male and relatively youthful, so it was no surprise which picture got the most attention. Even a fighter jet couldn’t compete with a photo of a beautiful, naked woman.