Weightless taste: what is the daily menu for astronauts
On the ISS drink dry soup and swap cottage cheese for steaks.
Roskosmos announced the preparation of the female cosmonaut corps. While the account is not in our favor: from the Soviet Union and Russia for all the time fly in space went only four women, while from NASA — more than 50 girls. That will prepare the future “flying squad” and how in these moments an eating astronauts — see the article “Izvestia”.
Goodbye, cracker!
Behind the glass — the tea ceremony. Quiet, sterile. In the deft hands of female employees Biruliovsky pilot plant tea bags is wrapped in transparent packaging like with “ears” — “the pot”.
She’s astronauts and glass, and plate.
ABC (hotpot), for example, eat this: on one side of the packaging make the incision and pour water in the funnel. Wait, knead the contents of the package. After 15 minutes, open the opposite edge of the packaging and can be eaten — the dish is ready.
Now “pot”, sublimation packing, put more than half of the dishes from the diet of astronauts: soups, side dishes, main dishes, desserts, juices, jellies. Canned food make up a little less than half.
“Before, everything was in the box, but now refuse. Weighs 165 g tube, but sublimation is only 50 g. with the saved weight you can deliver more water,” explains the utility of packing the chief designer of space power Viktor Dobrovolsky. However, to give up entirely on the tubes, no one is going for the two kinds of sauce, mustard and honey packaging is better not to think. Will not spill, and dosing convenient.
How to make cosmic soup?
How to make cosmic soup? For the beginning cook ordinary soup in rich broth. Then take the dish to the shop freeze-drying. Here the soup is poured on a baking sheet and put in a special installation. Two days the dish in this cell is at a temperature of from minus 30 degrees to minus 50. Then this creates a vacuum and simultaneously heating is included. So goes the drying process.
The result is a liquid soup turns into a pinkish-red powder. Want to eat — add water.
— Ice crystals in the water do not develop, and evaporate. When the cell is not destroyed, and all the nutritional properties remain up to 97% — said Dobrovolsky.
Not a drop by and not a crumb. No wonder space bread can be stored for a year, cut for midgets — size of only 2 to 2.5 cm. Size matters. For safety.
Small loaves one bite to crumbs was not. Otherwise, in zero gravity will fall into the Airways of the astronauts, and this is unacceptable.Victor Dobrovolskiy designer of space power
Experts, certainly, are reinsured astronauts and babies are not afraid. Feel free to order waffle cakes.
“What about the crumbs?” — worried technologists.
“And we have them vacuum! Catch on the fly”.
Cheese is the currency
The rate of supply of one astronaut is 1 kg 600 g of food per day, or 3000 calories. The main diet is designed for 16 days. 16 different soups, appetizers, main dishes — the whole cycle of meals are almost never the same. Receive mode — four times a day.
Whatever the name, the birthday of the heart and balm for the stomach: beef tongue in jelly with olives, mushrooms in Staraya Russa, beans in Bulgarian, sorpa with noodles…
Technology does not stop — looking for recipes in old books, turning for inspiration to the national cuisine. The result — every 2-3 years to add another 3-4 new dishes. Of the latest developments — lentil soup — red and green, and the cabbage soup. This summer, the astronauts will try the pumpkin-cheese soup, and technologists will again undertake the development of pates.
From the variety of products (more than 300 titles) from the most favorite crew for many years been a cottage cheese with nuts, almost “American dream”. No irony — neighbors in the compartment if it is not desired to sell, the steak is definitely sacrificed from your diet. Or maybe two.
“Cottage cheese with nuts were like gold, currency. Everything, had changed. Our more fruit sticks, apples and apricots, plums, cherries. Americans have instant juices like “Yippie”, BBQ, mango. Of course, our also wanted that changed,” says head of technical control Department Nina Bochkareva.