space food

Thinking about being an astronaut?

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Tomorrow marks 50 years since humans first walked on the Moon. Everyone seems to be talking about astronauts, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, where we’ve been in space and where we may go next.

Stuck at the Airport is in Houston – Space City – this week to be part of the festivities. We’re meeting with former astronauts, visting the labs that train and prepare food for astronauts and getting a first look at the restored Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

If all this space talk has got you thinking about becoming an astronaut, consider taking this Astronaut Apitude quiz filled with questions based on the official NASA Astronaut Candidate requirements and real-life psychological tests. Let us know how you score.

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Food from space, spotted in Sydney, Australia

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Greetings from Sydney, Australia where I’m touring the city and attending the Annual General Meeting of IATA  – the International Air Transport Assocation.

While in town, I visited the Powerhouse Museum, one of the sites of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences and, in the Space section, came across a few examples of old food from space.

 

This container, made by NASA, is from 1973 and was created so that astronauts on the Skylab space station could drink a lemonade in space.

According to the museum notes, this white plastic ‘concertina-shaped’ cylinder has a “brownish lemonade drink paste” inside which would be reconstituted by adding water. A velcro tab attached to the bottom of the container presumeably was used to attach the drink to a surface to keep it from floating in the cabin.

Also on display- Space food for cosmonauts from 1993:

From the museum notes:

“Inside the package are five individual food items including a tube of fermented cabbage soup (in paste/puree form), a tin of pork and potatoes, ten bite-size cubes of black bread sealed in a plastic wrap, a plastic sachet of peach and black grape juice powder and a small sachet of condiments. The juice sachet is folded over and comes fitted with a valved nozzle through which it would be rehydrated and drunk.”

Yum?