89
votes
Accepted
Has alcohol ever been consumed in space?
Brandy was sent along with Apollo 8’s Christmas dinner -- a 2-oz airline bottle each -- but mission commander Borman, out of an abundance of caution, ordered his crew not to partake. Jim Lovell sold ...
- 160k
55
votes
Accepted
Are there foods that astronauts are explicitly never allowed to eat?
At least in the Shuttle program, I'm afraid the list of forbidden foods was almost infinitely long. Anything not officially tested and approved was forbidden.
From the Space Shuttle Food System ...
- 157k
41
votes
Accepted
Are there any long term storable sources of vitamin C?
False premise:
Even the article you are citing does not support your statement.
Vitamin C is very much storable in the long term. It's just that the raw form of most of the natural foods that contain ...
40
votes
Are there foods that astronauts are explicitly never allowed to eat?
There are in fact many foods astronauts are not allowed to eat. I'll be specifically talking about the ISS as they are the only ones currently in space.
Bread: Astronauts are not allowed to eat bread ...
- 5,788
31
votes
Accepted
Why is unappetizing food brought along to space?
Taste-testing on Earth is good (what else can you do?) but crewmembers' sense of taste changes in free-fall.
People who live in space have said that food is not the same in space. Some astronauts say ...
- 157k
23
votes
Accepted
Did some Apollo astronauts actually carry a sandwich and bacon in their launch suit?
How about some photographic evidence? This is Pete Conrad, during suit-up for Apollo 12, having a sandwich stashed.
From this Popular Science article it appears the whole Apollo 12 crew got ...
- 160k
22
votes
Accepted
Could the void of space act as a good refrigerator for food in long journeys?
On planet earth, food spoils for several reasons:
Oxidation
Dehydration
Microorganisms
Oxidation is a reaction with the oxygen in the atmosphere. You can witness this when you cut an apple in half ...
- 9,136
22
votes
Accepted
Did astronaut Scott Kelly eat cake in space?
I don't know exactly what Kelly is eating there, but brownies are on the ISS menu.
Some foods can be eaten in their natural forms, such as brownies and fruit.
A good moist brownie in bite-sized ...
- 160k
19
votes
Accepted
How was "Space Ram" (instant ramen noodles) prepared and eaten on the Space Shuttle?
Like many dehydrated space foods, it's prepared by injecting hot water through a port in an otherwise sealed bag, manually mixing it by massaging the bag, and waiting a few minutes; the noodles are ...
- 160k
16
votes
Has alcohol ever been consumed in space?
I asked Oleg Kotov this exact question.
He told me that alcohol went missing from some medical kit on the ISS and was most certainly consumed in space.
- 269
15
votes
Are there any vegetarian astronauts?
In addition to the vegetarian and even vegan astronauts mentioned elsewhere, there soon may be more. In at least one of many possible scenarios for food on long flights, NASA astronauts on the ...
- 6,882
14
votes
Has alcohol ever been consumed in space?
During the Salyut 1 mission, the birthday of one of the cosmonauts was celebrated with a very small amount of alcohol, as far as I have read.
Supporting reference:
The first alcoholic drink went ...
- 141
14
votes
Are there any long term storable sources of vitamin C?
Not to disagree with PcMan's answer as marked accepted, but adding some more information that might be interesting and could pass as an answer in its own right :-)
Thing is, before space exploration, ...
- 243
12
votes
Accepted
Mass of food per astronaut per year for an extended deep space excursion?
So, after a lot of searching after what are the recommended daily intake in terms of nutrient requirements and other stuff, I used a couple of sources to make an average of what is actually needed, ...
- 756
12
votes
Accepted
How do astronauts brew tea on ISS and what brewing temperature is common?
The water temperature for restoring products, making tea and coffee is different: + 85˚ С or from + 25˚ С to + 42˚ С - depending on what the cosmonaut has on the menu. Hot water is used mainly for the ...
- 7,675
11
votes
Growing food in space
The structure of lettuce is determined by a combination of genetics and environmental effects. What the growth of the lettuce on the ISS indicates is that gravity is negligible in terms of its effect ...
- 23.5k
11
votes
Could the void of space act as a good refrigerator for food in long journeys?
The effect of the void of space is not so much cold, rather it is an insulator. Though heat radiates away, there is no convection nor conduction. Many spacecraft take precautions not to overheat in ...
- 6,553
11
votes
Can fish really live in microgravity without water?
Gills aren't purely for respiration. Fish constantly excrete ammonia and urea from their gills and without sufficient water to wash the waste away this would soon cause death, much like how too small ...
- 121
11
votes
Accepted
Can the vacuum of space be used to sterilize equipment?
Can the vacuum of space be used to sterilize equipment?
Supposing that washing dishes and sterilizing medical equipment could be expensive to do in space, would a viable option be to expose dishes, ...
- 3,191
11
votes
Accepted
Fuel vs food on the trip to Mars?
Fuel requirements will probably dominate food and other consumables by an order of magnitude or more, so you can't save mass by shortening the trip. The exact tradeoff depends on the assumptions you ...
- 160k
11
votes
Accepted
Has a source of vitamin C ever been successfully grown in space?
Yes; NASA selected bok choy, aka "Chinese cabbage", for one of their recent garden experiments, quite possibly because of its high vitamin c content (45mg, half of your daily recommended dose, per ...
- 126
11
votes
Accepted
Did NASA ever supply astronauts with canned food?
Yes, it wasn't uncommon.
Types of food used on the first 25 Space Shuttle missions included
thermostabilized food in flex pouches or cans, rehydratable foods
and beverages in square packages, ...
- 157k
10
votes
In the near future, will spacecraft be able to carry the means to cook and serve traditional meals?
Several points come to mind:
In most sci-fi there is gravity. At the moment we do not have a non-earth location where humans can go with gravity. If we have habitats on the Moon or Mars then there ...
- 6,073
10
votes
How was "Space Ram" (instant ramen noodles) prepared and eaten on the Space Shuttle?
If the package on the right of the lower picture in the question was actually flown, it would have been heated in the Shuttle galley's "food warmer" / "oven". This is because it already contains ...
- 157k
10
votes
Removing perchlorate from Mars surface soil
Perchlorate contamination is a problem on Earth. Essentially, there is a series of water treatments and bioremediation, the process of using biological systems to fix the problem.
Here is a detailed ...
- 2,203
10
votes
World's most expensive space cookie? (What am I looking at, object identification, rivets and all)
That was cookie #2 of 5.
It is part of an experiment on just how cooking food behaves in zero-g. For future longterm missions and such.
The "0GK" stands for "Zero Gee Kitchen", the ...
9
votes
Zero gee rice cooker for BFR's trip around the Moon; how would that work?
Most foods cooked in space are not brought up to a complete boil because dealing with the steam would be an issue. Currently they inject hot water into vaccuum sealed pouches containing food. I would ...
- 317
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible