Food in the Air and Space

by Richard Foss

  Grissom: What is it?

  Young: Corn beef sandwich.

  Grissom: Where did that come from?

  Young: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?

  Grissom: Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.

  Young: Is it? It was a thought, anyway.

  Grissom: Yep.

  Young: Not a very good one. Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together.

  The flight directors at Mission Control were outraged by the frivolity, and the press portrayed Young and Grissom as irresponsible with scathing headlines like “Two Astronauts Team Up As Comics.”13 A congressional committee even held a hearing on the matter, though it is notable that the representatives who demanded it had been critics of the program for some time and had been trying to cut its funding.

  The corned beef sandwich incident was a debacle that resulted in strict rules about what the astronauts could bring aboard—none had existed previously because it apparently didn’t occur to NASA administrators that anybody might smuggle their favorite foods along. After weeks of hearings and torrents of internal memos, the only ones who were happy with the incident were the management at Wolfie’s Deli, the restaurant in Miami Beach that had supplied the sandwich.14 For them every mention in the press was free publicity of a kind they couldn’t buy at any price, and tourists from around the world stopped in to try the sandwich so good that it had been smuggled into space. Wolfie’s had accidentally profited from the mania for space, while other food producers in the United States were doing so deliberately.

  chapter 20

  Commercialization of Space Food on Earth

  Given that every astronaut ever interviewed about the taste of food in space complained about it, it’s rather surprising that some items developed for, or associated with, the space program were popular hits. Or perhaps it’s not—the surge in national pride when countries put people in space led to outbursts of enthusiasm for anything remotely related to the program.

  By all accounts the Soviets had the most palatable food in the early days, but as might be expected in a country that officially spurned capitalism, there were few attempts to profit from cosmonaut mania. A type of cake—actually a thick biscuit, since there was no rising agent—called “Polyot,” the Russian word for flight, became popular in the 1960s.1 This was apparently occasionally decorated to look like a space capsule but was not a product ever actually eaten in space. It was also not mass-produced, and every bakery had its own recipe.

  There were also various brands of candy like the “Kosmonavt” jelly beans, but these too were just standard items packaged to take advantage of space mania. It may be that Soviet planners considered the overwhelmingly negative reviews given to all space foods and decided that nobody would be enough of a fool to buy it.

  A different calculation was made on the other side of the Atlantic. The great critic H. L. Mencken one said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the bad taste of the American public,” and some American food companies decided to put this to the test.

  The first product they marketed based on its association with the space program was Tang, which was actually created well before the first astronaut took flight. Tang was introduced in 1959, the invention of food scientist William Mitchell, whose other creations included Cool Whip, instant Jell-O, and Pop Rocks candy. It was a mix of sugar, fructose, citric acid, “orange juice solids,” and vitamins that had a slightly metallic taste and lurid orange color. The crystallized instant drink was nutritious, easy to make, and initially, a sales disaster.

  The turning point was when John Glenn was given some to try aboard his famous first flight—immediately the company could brand it as a drink “Chosen for the Gemini astronauts!” NASA used it instead of natural orange juice because dehydrated natural orange juice doesn’t reconstitute well—it tends to turn into gritty particles suspended in liquid. Tang became a national best seller, and stores had trouble keeping it on the shelves. Recipes appeared that used Tang—among the most popular of these was Tang Pie, which used two of William Mitchell’s creations, Tang and Cool Whip, in a creamy pie filling. For some reason, this is enduringly popular in Texas and parts of the South.

  The irony was that Glenn, like several other early astronauts, apparently disliked the taste of Tang, though he drank it again when he returned to space aboard the shuttle in 1998. Glenn wasn’t outspoken about his feelings about the drink, but later astronauts were—Buzz Aldrin bluntly said “Tang sucks!” during an interview with NPR in 1998.2 It is not known whether Aldrin knows that there is a cocktail named the Buzz Aldrin, consisting of Tang and vodka with an orange slice for garnish. Given his feelings about the drink, he may not think this is a compliment.

  The first item to be sold on Earth that used techniques unique to the space program was freeze-dried ice cream, a novelty developed by the Whirlpool Company that is best known for making washing machines and other appliances.3 Most people who have tried freeze-dried ice cream wish they had stuck with a business they knew. The mix of coconut fat, sugar, milk solids, and flavorings looks very much like Neapolitan-style ice cream but has a unique gummy texture. It doesn’t even work well as space food—on the only voyage into space where anyone tried to eat it, aboard Apollo 7 in 1968, it was discovered that its tendency to shatter and crumble made it impractical. It is still made and has retained a niche market among backpackers, who appreciate a sweet snack that is very light.4

  The most commercially successful of the products designed for the space program but consumed on Earth was Space Food Sticks, the forerunner of the energy bar.

  Source General Mills Company

  The final fad food item to be associated with the space program was popular on Earth long before it was ever eaten in space. Unlike Tang, Space Food Sticks actually were designed with the space program in mind. The Pillsbury Company’s chief food technologist, Howard Bauman, was interested by the challenge of creating a high-energy food that would stay stable at room temperature and wouldn’t create crumbs. Bauman found a stable formula and started producing the sticks in chocolate and peanut butter flavors, wrapping them in silver foil to give them a space-age look. The company started selling them in 1971, using packaging that featured pictures of astronauts and implied that they were already in orbit. The front of the box read, “Space Food Sticks—The energy food developed by Pillsbury under a government contract in support of the US aerospace program.”

  Space Food Sticks only actually went into orbit once, on the Skylab 3 mission in 1972, but they lived on in the United States for a few years; production by Pillsbury ceased around 1980. They were more enduringly popular in Australia, where they continue to be popular to this day, and they are credited with spawning the market for energy bars. In an unlikely turn of events, in 2000 a website called retrofuture.com posted an article about Space Food Sticks and hundreds of people wrote in to bemoan that they were no longer available. The owner of that website, Eric Lefcowitz, eventually re-created them, and they are for sale in the twenty-first century both online and at places like Kennedy Space Center, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and other places where people with space nostalgia congregate.5

  chapter 21

  Apollo, Soyuz, and Variety

  in Space (1966–1994)

  Both the American and Russian space programs had a hiatus in 1966, one planned, one not. The American Mercury program had already scheduled its last manned flight for that year, in order to transition to more sophisticated and spacious Apollo spacecraft. The first Apollo launches would be unmanned to test equipment, and under the best of circumstances there would be a two-year lull in manned flight. The death of three astronauts in a fire aboard Apollo 1 during training set the program back more than a year.

  The Soviet Union also had a planned transition, from the Vostok program to more sophisticated Soyuz capsules, but it w
as scheduled to be a brief one. The goal was to continue launches of manned craft, culminating with landing a man on the moon by 1967. The sudden death in 1966 of the great designer Sergey Korolov, who had headed the program, set off bureaucratic infighting and delays, and when the first manned Soyuz capsule was sent up in 1967, the cosmonaut was killed on reentry. This started more than a year of frantic redesigns, and the ambitious lunar program was scaled back so that the goal was now to orbit the moon by 1967. Even that was not attainable, and neither program launched a man into space again until October 1968.

  The Apollo capsule that soared into orbit on October 11 was a marked improvement over its predecessors—there was room for three astronauts rather than two, and they had more space to work and move around. They also had a luxury that no previous space traveler had enjoyed: hot water. This enhanced the flavor and texture even of the type of rations that had previously been provided, especially the mashed potatoes that had previously been eaten cold.

  Happily for the astronauts on that first mission, the variety and technology of food had both changed for the better. They not only had such items as bacon and eggs, tuna salad, hot dogs, beef pot roast, and spaghetti, they were able to eat them in a more natural way with the first utensils designed for use in space—the spoon bowl. This was a zippered plastic package of dry ingredients that was rehydrated with a water pistol—sticky items like the beef pot roast could be eaten with the spoon so astronauts could see, small, and taste their food.1 The result was that for the first time there was something like the taste and texture of meals on Earth.

  The astronauts had apparently been prepared for rations similar to those of Mercury and Gemini missions, and reacted with enthusiasm. An article in the New York Times was based on an interview with the crew, and read in part,

  Food on the Apollo 7 spacecraft still does not match home cooking, but it comes a lot closer than space food used to. Even at that, the astronauts reported, ‘The beef stew tends to be very crumbly.’ . . . Because Apollo has both hot and cold running water, packaged chunks of dried beef stew can be prepared and served hot. The Apollo 7 command pilot, Capt. Walter M. Schirra Jr., took some coffee on the flight and reported it was somewhat difficult to prepare but pleasing to the palate. Today’s menu for Captain Schirra, who insisted on bringing the coffee on the flight, was spaghetti and meat sauce, tuna salad, banana and chocolate pudding. Walter Cunningham’s menu consisted of beef sandwiches, beef and vegetable soup, and barbecued beef bites.2

  The newfound enthusiasm for eating in space was gratifying to the administrators for more than aesthetic reasons; they had noticed that astronauts had lost weight and come back from previous missions weaker because they had so little enthusiasm for eating. These meals had been designed to give each astronaut about 2,300 calories per day, and sweet and rich items like cinnamon toast, gingerbread, instant cocoa, and butterscotch pudding were included. Astronaut Walter Cunningham complained that the meals were too sweet and too large, and said that all the astronauts were filled before they finished.3

  Though tubes of food were still provided for emergencies, some meals were undehydrated and packaged in what were called wetpacks. As the Encyclopedia of Kitchen History describes these, “One type of wetpack was a flexible plastic or aluminum foil pouch; another was a can with pull-off lid. With this method, staff could pack a week’s worth of rations per astronaut in a container no larger than three shoe boxes.” It was a triumph of technology, food that occupied lower volume of storage but gave more satisfaction. On the next Apollo mission something unusual happened: the astronauts actually dined better than their counterparts on the ground.

  For Christmas 1968, Frank Borman, James A. “Jim” Lovell, Jr., and William “Bill” Anders, the pilots of Apollo 8 who looped the moon on a 150-hour flight, munched turkey chunks and spooned up gravy while envious Mission Control technicians staffed monitors and contented themselves with coffee and sandwiches.4

  The Soviets managed to launch a pair of marginally successful missions the next year in their first spacecraft that carried three people, but their efforts were overshadowed by the landmark Apollo 11 mission. On July 16, 1969, that craft carried the first men to land on Earth’s moon, and during the eight-day trip the voyagers enjoyed an option available to no previous crew: their choice of items from a pantry. All meals in space had been preplanned weeks or months in advance, but this time the astronauts were offered their choice at every course. The Whirlpool Corporation, last mentioned here in the context of their freeze-dried ice cream, proved that they could deliver variety and taste, and newspapers gushed about the change.

  When Apollo 11 astronauts land on the moon, they will be eating tasty, nutritious and varied meals supplied to NASA by the Life Support Division of the Twin Cities’ Whirlpool Corporation. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin will spend about 24 hours on the moon and the rest periods, they will eat two meals there. Their first scheduled meal to be eaten on the moon will consist of bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit drink and coffee. The second meal will contain beef stew, cream of chicken soup, date fruitcake, grape punch and orange drink. In addition to the meals, other snack items such as dried fruit, candy, extra beverages, wet packs, sandwich spread, and bread will be included.

  Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins will eat in the command module according to pre-planned menus and will also have pantry items which they can select at will. The meals are referred to as Meal A, B or C and are identified to each astronaut’s predetermined menu by means of a colored tab of ‘velcro’ material. . . . Besides identifying the food, it acts as a holding device which keeps the food packs from floating in space. Unlike other missions, Apollo 11 will carry pre-planned menus for only the first five days of the flight. For the duration of the flight, the astronauts may select individual food items from a pantry. Pantry items are foods which are not assembled by menus but merely packaged in categories such as Desserts, Beverages, Breakfast Items, Bite-size Cubes and Salads and Meats. The pantry system enables the astronauts to select at random whatever food item they desire. Other pantry items include: Rehydratable dessert items: banana pudding, butterscotch pudding, applesauce and chocolate pudding. Rehydratable beverages: orange drink, orange grapefruit drink, pineapple fruitcake, jellied fruitcake, jellied fruit candy and caramel candy. Breakfast items: peaches, fruit cocktail, Canadian bacon, bacon squares, sausage patties, sugar coated corn flakes, strawberry cubes, cinnamon toasted bread cubes, apricot cereal cubes and peanut cubes. Salads and meats: salmon salad, tuna salad, cream of chicken soup, shrimp cocktail, spaghetti and meat sauce, beef pot roast, beef and vegetables, chicken and rice, chicken stew, beef stew and pork and scalloped potatoes.5

  Lost in the middle of all that was a mention of one of the oldest foods in human history that was included for the first time: bread. Nibbles and bites of bread had been included before, but the dry, oxygen-rich atmosphere of the capsule dried out sliced bread almost instantaneously. At some point before this mission, scientists figured out that packaging the bread in nitrogen could keep it fresh for two weeks, at little cost to flavor, and the moist bread would produce fewer crumbs.6

  The Soviet program continued to launch spacecraft that were plagued by technical difficulties, such as the Soyuz 6, 7, and 8 that were supposed to dock together—though all three craft took off and landed safely, their highly publicized docking maneuver flopped. The program’s first bright spot in years was Soyuz 9 in 1970, which broke a string of failures and also the record for duration in space at eighteen days. It was fortunate for people who were in space so long that their rations were the best yet and included many Russian traditional dishes formulated and packaged for orbit. For the first time on a Soviet-built craft they also had hot water, so could enjoy them to the fullest. An article by Vasily Dupik in the magazine Space World described in detail the ways that a truly Russian experience was created in zero gravity.

  The menu on the Soyuz-
9 was highly appreciated by its crew. It was composed for Andryian Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyoanov with an eye to their tastes. There are tinned foods prepared the usual way, but with a decreased content of moisture. Their rations included milk and sweets, dried fruits, juices and dried fish. In was by their special request that Vobla (dried fish) was made a fixture in their daily menus. Here is the menu of one of the days during which the crew of Soyuz-10 was in outer space:

  Breakfast: Chopped bacon (or a choice of veal liver pate, or minced sausage), Borodinsky black bread, Coffee and milk, Candied fruit

  Lunch: Creme of cottage cheese and black current puree, Honey cookies

  Dinner: Vobla (smoked fish), Kharcho (spiced meat and rice soup), Chicken (or ham or meat pate), Brown bread, Prunes and nuts

  Supper: Meat puree, Borodinsky bread, Tinned Rossisky cheese.

  . . . To this list should be added sorrel and cabbage soups, wieners, steak, pork, and puree of wild fowl, sweet meats and chocolate. The spacemen were also obliged to take polyvitamin pills containing vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C and E twice a day.

  When composing these rations, Soviet specialists take into account the biological value of the foods, their taste and aesthetic appearance. Therefore, serious attention is paid to their wrappings. Part of the food is contained in metal boxes, and confectionary and some other foods in polymer film. Tinned meats . . . contain protein, little fat and an even smaller amount of other ingredients. They are sufficiently juicy, but have no brine which is dangerous in weightlessness, since it can form a ‘raincloud’ in the ship’s cabin. The spacemen use cupronickel spoons and forks. True, they often have to violate etiquette and ‘tame’ the floating food with their hands.7

  Unfortunately for the Soviets, their next two missions did not have the same success. Soyuz 10 took off and landed safely but did not accomplish its goals, but Soyuz 11 seemed to be going well and set a new endurance record of twenty-two days. One of the cosmonauts, Viktor Patsayev, celebrated a birthday during the mission, and his companions presented him with surprise gifts: a lemon and an onion.8 Patsayev said he particularly enjoyed the onion, and as the craft headed back to Earth it looked like a perfect mission. Unfortunately, when the capsule was opened after landing, all three occupants were dead, suffocated by a ventilation system valve that had jarred open and expelled their oxygen.