From Tubes To Takeout: Eating In Space Now And In The Future

For decades, space food was about survival and not enjoyment. Now, as humans prepare to spend more time off-world, mealtimes are becoming something to look forward to again.

“What a particularly striking shade of red today is,” you think to yourself as you sip on your little cappuccino outside your favourite café overlooking the Jezero Crater on Mars. You start to think about what you should have for dinner. Do you go to that taqueria that just opened up on the Moon you’ve been hearing good things about? Or maybe you’ll opt for a meal with a view on that shuttle orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour (not that you’d feel it; they’ve done a fantastic job with the suspension). Soon, perhaps even sooner than we think, these scenarios will be less science fiction and more very real dining dilemmas.

Space exploration, you see, has come on in leaps, bounds, and catapults in recent years. The exponential pace at which technology accelerates means that now even the outer reaches of the stratosphere are no longer solely the domain of large-brained men and women in peak physical form who’ve dedicated their lives to mastering a narrow and unforgiving set of skills that leave little room for a step out of turn, and even less for ordinary people.

I mean, we recently sent Katy Perry there, to prove my point. But I have to say, space did suit her well. Perhaps we should leave her there, but I digress. As off-world travel has rapidly progressed, so has food technology alongside it. Take a look at what NASA has its astronauts eating today; it might just be a sign of what dining on the Moon could look like in the time to come.

Back when space food was barely food

If you were an astronaut in the early days, let’s just say you weren’t exactly looking forward to mealtimes. Breakfast would look less like an enticingly sunny omelette and more like soil-coloured slop squeezed from a metal tube. Dinner would be a dry, compressed, and ambiguously defined cube of “nutrition.” It was practical, sure, but you wouldn’t describe it as appetising.

The Apollo era saw NASA introduce thermostabilised pouches that finally brought some semblance of flavour and variety to proceedings, though your options were still far from what could be called extensive. The priority here was singular; taste was but a faraway consideration as food was designed to be lightweight, safe, long-lasting, and free of rogue crumbs that could potentially interfere with delicate spacecraft systems.

The modern space pantry

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way from the days when you had to double-check your food to make sure you hadn’t reached for a cube of papier mache instead. Nowadays, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) tuck into a menu that looks a lot like what we enjoy here on the ground.

Their meals include freeze-dried dishes rehydrated with hot water, thermostabilised mains like stews and curries, as well as plenty of snacks like nuts, dried fruit, and the ever-popular tortillas. Bread, unfortunately, is still banned. They haven’t quite managed to solve the crumb problem just yet.

NASA’s diligent scientists work around the clock to come up with meals that take into careful consideration all elements of nutrition, flavour, and stability. Meals must be hardy enough to survive for months on end without refrigeration, while still delivering enough calories and vitamins to keep astronauts ticking over during high-stress missions teetering on razor-thin margins.

So human-centric is it now that each astronaut gets to participate in a taste test before liftoff to build their own personal menu. They also get “bonus containers” filled with comfort foods from home, a soothing pick-me-up when those long deployments start to feel like they’re taking their toll.

Why you can’t just fry an egg in orbit

Now, that’s all well and good. The brave boys and girls venturing to the realms of the interstellar to further our collective understanding of what’s out there certainly deserve not to have their stomachs turn every time they sit down for a meal, but what about actually cooking in space?

See, this is where things get tricky. It turns out that the gravitational conditions we enjoy down here are absolutely imperative to cooking, among other things. In microgravity, you don’t get the luxury of frying pans, boiling pots, or open flames, because matter doesn’t behave up there like it does down here. Liquids bead up and float instead of staying put, and oils drift instead of pooling. The simplest of kitchen tasks, like stirring and pouring, become a catastrophic exercise in mess control. That’s why, instead of a kitchen, astronauts have to depend on things like warmers, food scissors, and specialised rehydration units to prep their food instead.

Then there’s the matter of how taste changes in orbit. You thought the food sucks on a plane? Try 30 times that altitude and see what you think then. It’s the reason astronauts tend to crave spicier and more intense flavours, anything to make them feel like they’re at least tasting something.

The next frontier: Eating on Mars

We’ve done well as a species to get to the Moon, and now the next celestial body in our sights is Mars. This is an undertaking that’ll require a lot more than just prepackaged meals; what will be a multi-year journey will necessitate fresh food, renewable supplies, and closed-loop systems where waste can be repurposed.

NASA, of course, is already on it. They’re already testing some pretty out-there solutions, including hydroponic and aeroponic plant growth, 3D-printed foods, and even compact greenhouses that could feasibly operate on the surface of Mars someday. It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem; the ISS, after all, has already grown lettuce, radishes, and even chilli peppers in orbit, baby steps towards what could one day manifest in sustainable space agriculture.

A new era of off-earth dining

So yes, space food has come a long way from meat-flavoured toothpaste to dishes that look a lot like what we eat here on Earth. The next step now will be bringing actual cooking to these as-yet scarcely traversable realms. As we push on in our efforts to reach Mars, food will prove to be an indispensable part of the equation that’ll sustain us in many different ways beyond just the physical. Throughout our collective existence, we’ve historically brought our kitchens and cravings along with us wherever we’ve gone. Now, we’re getting ready to set the table further beyond than ever before.