Paolo Nespoli, and a handful of MIT colleagues to a day-
long workshop at the Media Lab.
The focus group gathered in a fluorescent-lit con-
ference room decorated with large-format photos of
lollipops and Buffalo wings and coiled spirals of salami.
On the table, Coblentz had laid out small plastic cups
of M&Ms, freeze-dried cheese bites, and Tang; these
would serve as both snacks and design inspiration.
Nespoli showed up with props of his own—some sil-
very foil packets from NASA’s current menu rotation;
some cans filched from the Russian supplies and the
European Space Agency, including one simply labeled
space food; and a translucent plastic package filled with
what looked like yellowish plugs of ear wax but were
apparently dehydrated mashed potatoes. “Nobody goes
to space for the food,” Coleman said.
Coblentz began by making her pitch. Humanity’s
off-world survival, she said, will depend on a diet that
can nourish not only travelers’ bodies but their minds
and souls. Space food must inspire and unite; it must
reflect both the grandeur of the endeavor and the maj-
esty of the surroundings. Coleman, a kind-faced, nur-
turing type who wore a T-shirt depicting a Martian
mountain range, nodded. Nespoli, a rugged former
special-forces operator from Milan, raised his heavy
eyebrows in polite skepticism.
Undaunted, Coblentz invited Coleman and Nespoli
to describe their culinary experiences aboard the Inter-
national Space Station—the challenges, the frustra-
tions, and the highlights. “You know, people ask me,
‘Why don’t you cook pasta in space? You’re Italian!’”
Nespoli replied, still seemingly determined to deflate
Coblentz’s grand aspirations. “And I’m like, ‘Well, I
would love to. But you simply cannot.’ I think you will
not understand food in space unless you start under-
standing some of the practical problems that make
food in space what it is.”
Those practical problems have been the focus of
sustained research for more than half a century. In
the earliest days of the original space race, scientists
worried that it might not be possible to eat in zero g at
all. The human digestive system evolved to function
in Earth’s gravitational field; prolonged weightless-
ness might cause choking, constipation, or worse. The
problem required research, but at the time there was
no way of duplicating the proper conditions on Earth.
“Gravity as a physical factor of environment has the
outstanding property of being omnipresent and ever-
lasting,” a 1950 technical report explained. “Not a sin-
gle individual has as yet been away from its influence
for more than one or two seconds.”
The scientists attempted a number of workarounds,
the most memorable of which involved a German-born
aeromedical doctor, Hubertus Strughold, numbing his
buttocks with novocaine. Once anesthetized, he had a
pilot fly him through a series of acrobatic maneuvers,
reasoning that the lack of any seat-of-the-pants sen-
FLOATING
RESTAURANT
Maggie Coblentz,
the Space
Exploration
Initiative’s head
of food research,
created a special
helmet for eating
in zero g.sation would be a decent substitute for weightlessness.
According to contemporary accounts, “he found the
experience very disagreeable.” (Strughold was one of
many former Third Reich scientists who were brought
to the US after World War II to work on the space pro-
gram. Although he was revered for decades as the
so-called father of space medicine, his reputation has
since been tarnished by his alleged association with
Nazi war crimes. He denied any involvement.)
By 1955, the Air Force had refined the art of parabolic
flight and could reliably provide up to 30 seconds of
microgravity at a time. Although some test subjects ini-
tially struggled, choking and gasping when they tried to
eat or drink, it was clear that scientists’ earlier concerns
had been overblown. Still, there is a reason planes like
the one Ekblaw chartered are known as “vomit com-
ets.” Somewhere between half and three-quarters of all
spacefarers suffer from what NASA calls space adapta-
tion syndrome, triggered by a sudden lack of data from
the otoliths. These ancient organs in the inner ear, made
up of tiny crystals of chalk embedded in a gelatinous
membrane, normally tell the brain where it is in rela-
tion to Earth’s gravitational field.
Most astronauts get over their motion sickness within
a few days, but nausea is far from the only hunger sup-
pressant they face. For one thing, there’s no way of
cracking a window in space, which means the enclosed
environment could easily smell, as Ekblaw described it,
“like everyone who has ever been there, every meal that
has been eaten, and every dump that has been taken.”
Coleman was quick to point out that the ISS has an
excellent filtration system, but the fight against funki-
ness never ends. “They tell you if you open a package of
food you have to eat it, all of it, if you like it or not,” Nesp-
oli said. “Whatever you have left over, it will start rotting
and it will stink. And you are a good disposal machine.”
This organic tendency in food—its inevitable trajectory
toward decay—is a major headache for space agencies.
When Nespoli asked to bring aged Parmigiano-Reggiano
aboard the ISS, NASA said no, because the artisans who
produced the cheese could not provide its expiration
date. (He had better luck with lasagna.)
Mitigating the malodor, but reinforcing the appe-
tite loss, is a condition known as “space face.” In the
absence of gravity, body fluids pool in the head. This is
the suspected cause of the irreversible vision problems
reported by some astronauts, but it also means that, for
many, eating in orbit is like eating with a severe head
cold here on Earth. Astronauts have reported cravings
for stronger tastes that cut through the flavor-muffling
congestion. Coleman says she “liked sugar up there a
little bit more” and began taking her coffee sweetened;
her crewmate Scott Kelly, who’d never much cared for
desserts on the ground, became something of a choc-
oholic during his year aboard the ISS.
But the “practical problems” Nespoli alluded to exert
by far the biggest effect on astronauts’ diet. Every pound