Word: space
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...have a degree in astrophysics and you know how to fly a jet. You've endured years of preparation and training, logged thousands of hours of flight time and even survived NASA's terrifying "vomit comet" weightlessness test. Now you're up in space for the very first time, floating around the shuttle's cabin, and as you look out of the window, you realize something: you're hungry. What are you going to eat? (See pictures of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon...
Initial voyages into space introduced questions scientists had never before considered. Could an astronaut swallow food in zero gravity? Would he choke? Would crumbs float into the shuttle's instruments and break something? To keep things simple, astronauts on the Project Mercury and Gemini missions ate pureed foods squeezed out of tubes. "It was like serving them baby food in a toothpaste container," explains Vickie Kloeris, NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory manager. John Glenn was the first person to eat in space; in 1962 he ingested applesauce and reported relatively easy digestion...
...these early tube meals were unappetizing, and astronauts dropped too many pounds. "We know that astronauts have lost weight in every American and Russian manned flight," wrote NASA scientists Malcolm Smith and Charles Berry in a 1969 Nutrition Today article. "We don't know why." Feeding people in space was not as easy as it looked. (Watch TIME's video "Why America Hasn't Gone Back to the Moon...
Floating around in space isn't as relaxing as it might sound. Astronauts expend a lot of energy and endure extreme stresses on their bodies. Their dietary requirements are therefore different from those of their gravity-bound counterparts on Earth. For example, they need extra calcium to compensate for bone loss. (Bones tend to regenerate slower in space, and the loss of mass begins almost immediately after takeoff). A low-sodium diet helps slow the process, but according to Kloeris, that's easier said than done. "There are no refrigerators in space, and salt is often used to help preserve...
Today, the most elaborate outer-space meals are consumed in the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts enjoy everything from steak to chocolate cake. They even have a small beverage chiller that can serve cold drinks. The ISS is a joint venture between the U.S. and Russia, and diplomatic guidelines dictate the percentage of food an astronaut must eat from each country. NASA's food laboratory has 185 different menu items, Russia offers around 100, and when Japan sent up its first crew member in 2008, about 30 dishes came with him. Kloeris says that the freeze-dried shrimp cocktail...