By Tony Hunter, food futurist
By now we’ve all seen rocket launches by SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and/or Blue Origin and heard of Elon Musk’s dream of travelling to Mars. But importantly, what would we eat?
At the moment astronauts on the ISS eat eighty percent of their food from the “Standard Menu” comprising everything from scrambled eggs to pretzels, almonds, and chicken teriyaki. The remaining 20% is a personal allowance. All of this food needs to meet stringent requirements, including nutrition, liquids or powders must not scatter under microgravity, 18 months shelf life, and of course be microbially safe. Even salt and pepper come in liquid form to prevent environmental contamination. And to add insult to injury food needs to withstand heating to 140C for an hour and still be edible.
With Orbital Assembly Corporation promising us space hotels by 2027 I wonder if the current space food menu will fly? At the likely hundreds of thousands of dollars per day space tourists will pay I’m thinking they’ll want something tastier. Perhaps Heston Blumenthal can be persuaded to develop some products as he did for Tim Peake, the first British Astronaut to live on the ISS, in 2016. Things like beef stew with truffles, wood-smoked salmon, sausages and mash, Thai red curry, key lime pie, and yes, even a bacon sandwich. Now that’s more like it.
On a less luxurious note, do you want to be involved in feeding humans in space or on Mars with something other than potatoes? (See the book or movie of The Martian) If so, then join the Deep Space Food Challenge co-sponsored by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. They’re looking for food solutions to feed astronauts on long-duration space missions that “have potential to benefit people on Earth.” The Canadian competition has yielded proposed solutions from using black soldier flies to recycle organic material to algal photobioreactors to “AstroYeast” specially adapted to growing in space. Less glamorous, but perhaps more essential than bacon sandwiches.
In space, no one can hear you scream for better food.
Tony Hunter is a global futurist, food scientist, speaker, and foresight strategy consultant. He consults and speaks globally, using his distinctive combination of scientific qualifications, business experience, and detailed understanding of exponential food technologies to deliver a unique perspective on the future of food.
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