Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the lady with her overcoat sticking out
Speaker 1: of the car door. Ali Ward, this is Ologies. I
Speaker 1: hope you have an appetite for airplane food like no
Speaker 1: other astrobramatology and it's delicious, is it? Let's talk? But first,
Speaker 1: thank you to all the patrons who were hungry for
Speaker 1: information about this ology. You send in your questions ahead
Speaker 1: of time. You two can support ologies and joining patron
Speaker 1: dot com slash Ologies for Sili is a buck a month.
Speaker 1: Huge shout out to patron Jillian Dugan, who this week
Speaker 1: got an Ologies tattoo. Jillian, it is wonderful to spend
Speaker 1: life with you. I could not be more honored. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you to folks out there in lower commitment Ologies
Speaker 1: merch from ologiesmerch dot com, including shirts and hats and tots.
Speaker 1: Smologies is our spinoff show of shorter, kid friendly and
Speaker 1: classroom safe episodes you can find where we get podcasts. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you to everyone who reviews the show. I read
Speaker 1: them all and they help so much to remind me
Speaker 1: I'm not recording in a dark room just for myself.
Speaker 1: Like this week's from nature lover Katie Twoshoes, who wrote,
Speaker 1: thank you, I am richer for your work and mushroom screams.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you taking Ologies along on your owl banding trip.
Speaker 1: Also thank you to the sponsor to the show who
Speaker 1: make it possible for us to donate to a charity
Speaker 1: of the ologists choosing each week.
Speaker 2: Hey Mark, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm not great a sore throat. I think I'm coming
Speaker 1: down with a cold.
Speaker 2: No, you should try a Vogel sore throat spray. It's
Speaker 2: a natural remedy. With ecination and sage, I can treat
Speaker 2: symptoms of coals and flus, including sore throats.
Speaker 1: Perfect. I'd give that a try.
Speaker 2: So we leave sore throats symptoms with a vogel a
Speaker 2: Quena four sore throat spray made from echinasia and sage
Speaker 2: herbs and designed to reach irritated parts of the throat,
Speaker 2: available from health stores and pharmacies nationwide.
Speaker 3: Always read the leaflet.
Speaker 1: As long as I've got you in the giving mindset,
Speaker 1: I wanted to fill you in that from our Trillology
Speaker 1: episode in late August, the wonderful sight giving multiplier set
Speaker 1: up accustom ologies url to donate to your favorite charity
Speaker 1: and then split the donation with highly effective global charities.
Speaker 1: In those few months, Oligites have raised over six hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety thousand dollars via GiveDirectly dot org slash ologies.
Speaker 1: We will link it in the show notes. You have
Speaker 1: helped lift twenty five households out of extreme poverty, provided
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred children's seasonal malaria prevention, given over one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand kids, vital vitamin supplements that have saved
Speaker 1: seventy kids lives, plus so much more good. I would
Speaker 1: need a whole hour at least to list it off,
Speaker 1: and through December. We're in a competition with twenty three
Speaker 1: other podcasters, including Yale professor doctor Lori Santos of the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab podcast, who was in our eutamology episode. So
Speaker 1: if you are looking to donate to both your favorite
Speaker 1: charity and highly effective ones, the site GiveDirectly dot org
Speaker 1: slash ologies is amazing. We get nothing and we win nothing.
Speaker 1: This is just a friendly competition to raise the money.
Speaker 1: Link GiveDirectly dot org slash ologies in the show notes.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for a less consumery holiday season, requesting
Speaker 1: a donation to your favorite charity can be a really
Speaker 1: great gift instead of another pair of slippers. So that's
Speaker 1: GiveDirectly dot org slash ologies. Okay, onto astrobramatology. Astro means
Speaker 1: celestial body or star in ancient Greek, and broma in
Speaker 1: Greek means food, so of course space food. This ologist
Speaker 1: is an artist and designer turned scientist who got their
Speaker 1: masters in industrial design for Rizdy. They have researched space
Speaker 1: food at MIT. They worked in the science division at
Speaker 1: the nat Geo Society. They've sent Miso to ferment on
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. They've studied solar ovens in Norway,
Speaker 1: looked at breadmaking in space, and attended the UNS meeting
Speaker 1: of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
Speaker 1: They also found it an initiative called Fieldscape that connects
Speaker 1: artists and scientists to work creatively and collaboratively, which is great.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that intersection as well as powdered meats,
Speaker 1: orange breakfast beverages, Martian gardening, espresso, and zero g how
Speaker 1: eating without gravity is like having COVID canned stews, stinky roommates,
Speaker 1: contraband corn beef, velcrow fatigue, wearing a space helmet on
Speaker 1: the roller coaster of a parabolic flight, and the Future
Speaker 1: of Food with artist, researcher, space food expert and thus
Speaker 1: astrobromatologist Maggie Coblenz.
Speaker 3: Maggie Coblentz, she here.
Speaker 1: I talked to so many people, Maggie. I asked them
Speaker 1: about their jobs, and you have one of the weirdest.
Speaker 1: It's so cool, it's so like space food, Like, who
Speaker 1: who does that? And the answer is Maggie. That's nuts.
Speaker 1: Does it come up at dinner parties? Does it come
Speaker 1: up at like let me introduce you to Maggie. She
Speaker 1: wears a helmet on a vomit comet to smell sizzling
Speaker 1: mirror plot? Does that come up?
Speaker 3: It? Does? I have a lot of names from friends
Speaker 3: space Maggie. I have a friend who calls me astrogue, astronomer,
Speaker 3: space witch.
Speaker 1: We have a friend who works at NASA who works
Speaker 1: in spectroscopy. We call her the Mistress of space rainbows. Oh,
Speaker 1: I like, and I think that just reads you're very
Speaker 1: well loved. I feel like the question you must get
Speaker 1: the most is like, how can I do this? Does
Speaker 1: that come up a lot?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Or I think it's more just this maybe bewilderment.
Speaker 3: How did you come to do what you do? Or yeah,
Speaker 3: why do you do what you do. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: how many people are aspiring space food experts, but there's
Speaker 3: always a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: When The Martian came out, did you feel like that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about potatoes to acquaintances for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life.
Speaker 2: It's been forty eight souls since I planted the potatoes,
Speaker 2: so now it's time to reap and resow.
Speaker 3: They grew even better than I expected. I now have
Speaker 3: four hundred healthy potato plants. I thought that was so cool.
Speaker 3: I was just so excited that the Martian was actually
Speaker 3: interviewing space food experts and bringing research into their process.
Speaker 3: So I felt like, okay, this is There's a lot
Speaker 3: of directions one could take this.
Speaker 1: Okay quick aside. Andy wears twenty eleven book The Martian
Speaker 1: was made into a movie in twenty fifteen, and in it,
Speaker 1: Matt Damon tried to grow potatoes on Mars. Afterward, NASA
Speaker 1: consulted with the International Potato Center to see if this
Speaker 1: could be done, because it would be helpful to have
Speaker 1: potatoes on Mars. So they tried with this Mars esque
Speaker 1: soil from Peru, but Mars dirt is toxic to human
Speaker 1: and plant life. So five years later, in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: this astrophysics professor figured out that certain bacteria might gobble
Speaker 1: up the toxic compounds in Mars soil, and as of
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty four article titled Detoxifying Mars the Biocatalytic
Speaker 1: Elimination of omnipresent Perchlorates, NASA announced that it'll try this
Speaker 1: method for cleaning the soil and the mostly subterranean ice
Speaker 1: on Mars. So perhaps space taters might one day be
Speaker 1: on the menu when we bail on this planet. So
Speaker 1: science it imitates art. Now you also you have a
Speaker 1: background in art and design too. How did this all
Speaker 1: kind of come about? It's a really wide general question,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, but I literally don't know even where
Speaker 1: to begin because it's so cool.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I also don't know where to begin. But it's
Speaker 3: true for me, it fits, but it also feels like
Speaker 3: a little bit of a jump. I think space is
Speaker 3: changing so much, the field of space, so it's not
Speaker 3: just scientist, engineers, technologists, but there's a lot of different
Speaker 3: disciplines who are contributing. My goal in starting this research
Speaker 3: it never was not actually to get a job although
Speaker 3: that's where I landed with space food. I was approaching
Speaker 3: it very much with the designers or industrial designers lends
Speaker 3: and looking at how do people live in space? I
Speaker 3: thought that was such a weird question and really stretched
Speaker 3: my imagination. So investigating the design of the International Space
Speaker 3: Station and how it's built, what's inside, what kind of
Speaker 3: furniture do they have, what are the space suits like,
Speaker 3: what is the food like? How does this inform the
Speaker 3: way that they can conduct their work, how they bring
Speaker 3: culture up there, the systems in place, who's allowed to go,
Speaker 3: who's not allowed to go because of these different designed
Speaker 3: objects in zero gravity? And how everything flips on its
Speaker 3: head once you get to space. So, as a designer,
Speaker 3: an artist, someone who loves to make things, this entire
Speaker 3: process changes in zero G. So with food, it's fluid dynamics.
Speaker 3: Do you need to be strapped to the wall while
Speaker 3: you eat or while you conduct to your work? This
Speaker 3: was my entry point as a designer.
Speaker 1: Do they have models on the ground of the space
Speaker 1: station for you to kind of conceptualize or do you
Speaker 1: have to go based on renderings and cat and photos.
Speaker 3: For me, I was going off of photos when I
Speaker 3: started this investigation. So I was looking at things online
Speaker 3: and interviewing people and a lot of anecdotal insights from
Speaker 3: astronauts just to describe in their own words what this
Speaker 3: space looked like. And then testing came later when I
Speaker 3: joined a new research lab and started to have access
Speaker 3: to things like zero G flights.
Speaker 1: There must be so much velcrow, right.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of velcrow. Everything's strapped down. But one
Speaker 3: of my favorite stories about the ISS, it actually didn't
Speaker 3: even include a dining table at first. So it was
Speaker 3: just thought that these humans almost treated like robots. We're
Speaker 3: just gonna go up there, float around, velcrow their food
Speaker 3: to the walls, strap themselves to the walls while they ate.
Speaker 3: And of course, naturally human beings want to gather. They
Speaker 3: want to have a place to come together and enjoy
Speaker 3: this very limited break in their day. And so one
Speaker 3: day an astronaut just found some scrap piece of material
Speaker 3: and strapped it to the wall to make a table,
Speaker 3: which really has no practical use in space, as you say,
Speaker 3: like you need valkro, you can't just have something sitting
Speaker 3: on a table. But still it was this human nature
Speaker 3: to have some kind of design intervention or a meal
Speaker 3: and for socializing with their fellow crewmates.
Speaker 1: As you can see, this is an open concept. I
Speaker 1: imagine that your work has to encompass anthropology, technology, physiology,
Speaker 1: gastro entyrology fromtology like it must involve so many different disciplines.
Speaker 1: Coming from an artistic background, is that part of what
Speaker 1: is exciting about it is that kind of learning and tinkering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, indeed I borrow pieces from all of these different
Speaker 3: fields ologies to create something new.
Speaker 1: What are they eating up there? In general? I always
Speaker 1: feel like if you grew up, you know, pre two thousand,
Speaker 1: like you might have heard of astronauts drink and a
Speaker 1: lot of tangs do some things you do in space.
Speaker 1: They drank Tang. They mixed it like this in a
Speaker 1: zero G punch because with no gravity it would fly
Speaker 1: all over.
Speaker 3: You don't have that problem.
Speaker 1: So Tang was born in nineteen fifty seven. It was
Speaker 1: created by food daddy William Mitchell, who also made such
Speaker 1: frankin foods as cool Whip, Quickset, Jello and the eternally
Speaker 1: baffling pop Rocks. Now the parent company General Foods had
Speaker 1: military contracts, no surprise, and in tests shelf stable Tang
Speaker 1: with its sugar multed extra and vitamin C helped mask
Speaker 1: the taste of the space capsule water supply. So in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties, Tang was sent into space and
Speaker 1: John Glenn thus became an astro influencer, and tank took
Speaker 1: off like a rocket. Now, in twenty thirteen, NASA's Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven buzz Aldrin astronaut publicly stated during an awards show,
Speaker 1: Tang sucks. When you sort of started this and you
Speaker 1: started logging, okay, like, how are they eating? What are
Speaker 1: they eating now? What was the baseline? What were they eating?
Speaker 3: The history of space food is so fascinating that the
Speaker 3: different space agencies have their own dining modules or their
Speaker 3: own cooking equipment, So NASA and the European Space Agency
Speaker 3: seem to share different systems for preparing food on the
Speaker 3: ground to go up to space, and then how do
Speaker 3: you actually prepare the food in space? So originally it
Speaker 3: was canned, which is extremely heavy and not the most practical,
Speaker 3: although it is a mode of preserving food. But this
Speaker 3: is heavy and costly to actually get to space. So
Speaker 3: at some point we're creating freeze dried foods. So this
Speaker 3: is just a dried food like Tang, but it's not
Speaker 3: always powdered form. It usually looks more like a sponge.
Speaker 3: I actually have some sitting in front of me right now.
Speaker 3: So it's a burger paddy that's been snapped in half
Speaker 3: and packed into this plastic wrap with all of the
Speaker 3: liquid removed from it, so it weighs practically nothing. A
Speaker 3: tiny circle of velcrow on the side, so an astronaut
Speaker 3: could attach it to a wall, and there's a barcode
Speaker 3: on it. Because astronauts are everything that they eat is
Speaker 3: monitored from the ground, so they would scan in what
Speaker 3: they eat so that their nutritionists could supervise this for them.
Speaker 3: And it tells you how much water to add, So
Speaker 3: there's a little spout on the top of the package,
Speaker 3: and they would attach it to something called the rehydration station,
Speaker 3: which is on the International Space Station. It's something almost
Speaker 3: like ninety or ninety nine percent of the water that's
Speaker 3: used is recycled from human urine, human perspiration, and then
Speaker 3: that gets processed and you put that back into your
Speaker 3: food as a warmer hot water, and then let it
Speaker 3: sit and cut the package open with scissors and eat
Speaker 3: it directly from the bag. So a lot of these
Speaker 3: foods are modeled that MREs, which are military rations.
Speaker 1: So quick background, given the astronomical shipping costs to destination orbit,
Speaker 1: the price to ship water up there is roughly eighty
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars per gallon, So you got to recycle, folks.
Speaker 1: The International Space Station's WPA, or water processor assembly, involves
Speaker 1: harvesting water vapor, and then that's in conjunction with a UPA,
Speaker 1: which is short for urine processor assembly. Don't you dare, wretch,
Speaker 1: don't do it. I hate to break it to you.
Speaker 1: Where do you think your water comes from a huge
Speaker 1: sparklets barrel in heaven? No, dude, your nw gene is
Speaker 1: filled with liquid that used to be frog snot and
Speaker 1: cruise ship toilets and elephant tiers. So, according also to
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty three space dot Com article titled NASA
Speaker 1: just recycled ninety eight percent of all astronaut p and
Speaker 1: sweat on the ISS and engineers are thrilled. The end
Speaker 1: result of this water reclamation is far superior to what
Speaker 1: municipal water systems produce on the ground. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you drink a glass of earthling tap water with your
Speaker 1: MRI or meal ready to eat, it is technically grosser
Speaker 1: than what they eat miles above the planet. They're like,
Speaker 1: it's war chow exactly, do it right, shut up and
Speaker 1: chow down exactly.
Speaker 3: But today it's different. There's I think Lavazza sent up
Speaker 3: an espresso machine because the coffee is again just powdered
Speaker 3: like an instant coffee. You add water. Another company called
Speaker 3: Zeroty Kitchen sent up an oven so they could bake
Speaker 3: the first cookie. And space there's lots of people who
Speaker 3: are trying to help these poor astronauts with food.
Speaker 1: When we're talking like first space flights, I imagine this
Speaker 1: wasn't even a concern for decades because they were up
Speaker 1: and back pretty quickly. Right right, when did they even
Speaker 1: start worrying about like you're going to need a snack?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I guess it would be around the Apollo era
Speaker 3: when astronauts started going to space for longer term and
Speaker 3: they would actually need to bring days of food supply
Speaker 3: and keep it in their capsule with them. And then
Speaker 3: now the food plants are changing even more where the
Speaker 3: current food system is supposed to last five years, and
Speaker 3: they have the Deep Space Food program at NASA at
Speaker 3: least to start to think about what is food for
Speaker 3: Mars and what are the challenges associated with preparing those foods.
Speaker 3: How will different space environment conditions impact the food? Will
Speaker 3: it degrade? Will the color, a texture, nutrition value change?
Speaker 3: For these trips where the return date is not even known.
Speaker 1: So the Deep Space Food Challenge concluded in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four and the three winners were a professor and student
Speaker 1: team from UC Riverside who invented no lux which means
Speaker 1: without light to grow plants and fungi in a dark
Speaker 1: little chamber using acetate to stimulate growth instead of light.
Speaker 1: And another winner of this challenge was this nifty contraption
Speaker 1: called SATED which stands for safe appliance, tidy, efficient and
Speaker 1: delicious okay, and it uses centrifugal force to press food
Speaker 1: against a heated cylinder, thus enabling the layering of foods
Speaker 1: such as the coveted slice of zaw in space. But
Speaker 1: the grand prize of the Deep Space Food Challenge went
Speaker 1: to this Florida team who created something called NUCLEUS. Again
Speaker 1: they love an acronym. It stands for nutritional closed loop
Speaker 1: Eco unit system and that helps farm greens and vegetables
Speaker 1: and edible bugs with minimal effort from the crew. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a set it and forget it ron Popeel situation.
Speaker 1: At that point, are they trying to terraform and grow,
Speaker 1: you know, Matt Damon potatoes in a bubble.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm sitting in a room and I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'm on a set of a science fiction film
Speaker 3: or if I'm actually in a real science meeting, because
Speaker 3: you think, is this really what's happening right now? There's
Speaker 3: the veggie project on the ISS that's growing fresh ingredients
Speaker 3: in space, but these are really just herbs and little
Speaker 3: pieces of lettuce that are more for emotional well being.
Speaker 3: To add a sprig to your food. It's unrealistic that
Speaker 3: an astronaut could truly sustain themselves off of what is
Speaker 3: possible to grow in space, at least with what technology
Speaker 3: we have now.
Speaker 1: And this suitcase sized ISS garden launched in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and it's grown mizuna mustard, red Russian kale, some edible
Speaker 1: Zinia flowers, and some Chinese cabbage. So it's just nice
Speaker 1: to have a sprig here and there. But it is
Speaker 1: no hometown buffet salad bar, because you are very far
Speaker 1: from a hometown and NASA does not have the budget
Speaker 1: for all you can eat. Also, hometown buffet doesn't even
Speaker 1: exist anymore since the start a COVID people were knocked
Speaker 1: down with just a plexiglass sneeze guard. So America's favorite
Speaker 1: unlimited cafeteria experience went belly up. Did do you have
Speaker 1: to look through a lot of research on what did
Speaker 1: the astronauts say? Were they like this is dog shit?
Speaker 1: Like I couldn't even eat this?
Speaker 3: So for me, it was more interviews anecdotal reports from astronauts,
Speaker 3: mostly Lisa NASA astronauts, and oftentimes when interviewing them, they
Speaker 3: sort of start off by saying, you know, food doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: This was my life dream to go to space. I
Speaker 3: was perhaps trained in the military, and it's no concern
Speaker 3: for me because I'm just in space.
Speaker 1: I'm just happy to be here.
Speaker 3: But then you get a little bit deeper into the
Speaker 3: conversation and then the complaining starts. It's horrible and they
Speaker 3: don't have anywhere to put their food waste, so they
Speaker 3: get this tremendous food fatigue because they have to eat
Speaker 3: their food out of this plastic and they can't just
Speaker 3: throw it out because it could raw or even you know, combust,
Speaker 3: so they actually have to lick all of the packages
Speaker 3: clean after every single meal. There's no fridge to store
Speaker 3: their leftovers. One Italian astronaut, Paulinispali, told me the chocolate's horrible,
Speaker 3: So he's complaining about the chocolates and the truth comes
Speaker 3: out eventually.
Speaker 1: If you're thirsty for more tea made from used water,
Speaker 1: let's peer into the September twenty twenty five article from
Speaker 1: Frontiers in Psychology titled Food Acceptability and Selection by Astronauts
Speaker 1: on International Space Station Mission Informed Strategies and Risks for
Speaker 1: Deep Space Exploration, which surveyed fifteen astronauts on the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. What are some takeaways? The breakfast foods and
Speaker 1: the lack of vegetables sucked the most and quote astronauts
Speaker 1: limited their menu selections to personal favorites early in the
Speaker 1: mission and did not consume foods they did not like,
Speaker 1: a habit that could compromise nutritional intake. And this is
Speaker 1: nothing new. As far back as the nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: Mercury flight, astronaut L. Gordon Cooper was served the first
Speaker 1: freeze dried meals, and through his thirty four mission he
Speaker 1: ate only seven hundred of the twenty four hundred calories
Speaker 1: available to him. So space food is that the ultimate
Speaker 1: appetite suppressant? Unfortunately sometimes yes. So the twenty seventeen study
Speaker 1: Initial Assessment of the nutritional quality of the space food
Speaker 1: system over three years of ambient storage in the journal
Speaker 1: Microgravity indicated that potassium, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin K
Speaker 1: concentrations in space food may not be adequate even before storage,
Speaker 1: and then during storage they observed the degradation of it,
Speaker 1: so decreases in certain vitamins just from sitting around. And
Speaker 1: there was a twenty twenty five article in Nature titled
Speaker 1: Feeding the Cosmos, Tackling Personalized Space Nutrition and the Leaky
Speaker 1: Gut Challenge, And I was like what? And that found
Speaker 1: evidence that suggested increased intestinal permeability referred to as leaky
Speaker 1: gut syndrome, which further disrupts nutrient absorption and immune regulation.
Speaker 1: How does one fix that? The authors propose bioengineering some
Speaker 1: really nutrient dense crops, adding antioxidants to the meals, and
Speaker 1: tailoring foods two specific astronauts genomes. Now, if there were
Speaker 1: a YELP for NASA, what would the reviews say? We're lucky?
Speaker 1: Because in that food acceptability study, I mentioned before. Astronauts,
Speaker 1: who were identified anonymously, I guess so as not to
Speaker 1: hurt anyone's feelings, dished up their real thoughts, and one remarked,
Speaker 1: there are not enough vegetables and fruit and these go fast.
Speaker 1: Too much nuts, and too much soup, so we're always
Speaker 1: down to just soup and nuts. Haha, they said, because
Speaker 1: vegetables and fruit get eaten more quickly. Astronaut B said,
Speaker 1: I have noticed that items are becoming a bit dull variety,
Speaker 1: and new foods at this point in the mission is
Speaker 1: a most welcome addition. Jay begged for sauces, saying almost
Speaker 1: everything could benefit from condom. Astronaut BE again submitted some remarks, hmm,
Speaker 1: it read like the confessional booth on a reality show.
Speaker 1: I'm living for them, bitching that I have a crew
Speaker 1: member that is eating a specific diet because of their
Speaker 1: food choices, we burn through many of the foods I
Speaker 1: like very quickly. The perceived variety is reduced and the
Speaker 1: repetition of food selections is increased. This specific diet by
Speaker 1: one crew member, they said, has an adverse effect on
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew. So imagine someone stealing your
Speaker 1: kische from the employee frigid work, but you are two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles above your home planet. You share
Speaker 1: a cubicle that smells like gym shorts, and you have
Speaker 1: to drink each other's pea. I would have gone on
Speaker 1: an untethered space walk by like day three. I'm out.
Speaker 1: Did you have to eat any of it?
Speaker 3: I have eaten some of it. I have a personal
Speaker 3: collection of space food with me at all times. I
Speaker 3: have actually have something. I have a few really special ones.
Speaker 3: I'm waiting for the day. I don't know this one
Speaker 3: I'm holding right now. It's from March twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It's steak.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's actually not freeze dried. It kind of feels
Speaker 3: like a piece of rubber. So I'm waiting for a
Speaker 3: special day to open that, and it may or may
Speaker 3: not be eaten if I'm next to a hospital.
Speaker 1: Ooh, okay, the ice cream sandwiches that we used to
Speaker 1: get it like Discovery Zone centers and things like that.
Speaker 1: Do they like them up there? Can they eat the
Speaker 1: whole thing? Do they eat them up there?
Speaker 3: So that is not really space food, which is probably know,
Speaker 3: it's very disappointing news. I actually did a school presentation
Speaker 3: on space ice cream I think in grade two, which
Speaker 3: life is full circle. But that is a demonstration of
Speaker 3: the freeze drying technology. But at least it would not
Speaker 3: be eaten in that form because it has to be
Speaker 3: rehydrated otherwise, these little crumb flyways. If you've ever actually
Speaker 3: had a chance to eat these ice cream bars or
Speaker 3: freeze dried ice cream, it crumbles almost as soon as
Speaker 3: you take a bite into it. So those little fly
Speaker 3: ways in the space station are highly problematic. I live
Speaker 3: the lot.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's say that you have a couple of
Speaker 1: bars in your pantry, which, to be honest, I do
Speaker 1: because for some reason, I've always loved dehydrated ice cream bars.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, if there's just nostalgia, or if
Speaker 1: it's just like when else can you eat chalk? But
Speaker 1: should I be rehydrating that in hot water and then
Speaker 1: eating it as a goopy mess to really get the
Speaker 1: astronaut experience. I will report back on this ice cream
Speaker 1: rehydration experiment later in the episode. It's soaking right now,
Speaker 1: but for now, expeditions to the International Space Station usually
Speaker 1: last about six months, and it's a joint operation between Europe,
Speaker 1: the United States, Russia, Canada and Japan. Now the craft itself,
Speaker 1: the ISS is around the size of a football field inside,
Speaker 1: though the habitable area is thirteen thousand cubic feet, which
Speaker 1: is about thirteen hundred square feet, or the size of
Speaker 1: a small, one story three better house. Typically there are
Speaker 1: seven crew members on the ISS at a time, but
Speaker 1: as they're swapping out, or if you get marooned up there,
Speaker 1: which happens, there might be more. The record is thirteen
Speaker 1: at once, thirteen people in a three bedroom house, all
Speaker 1: breathing each other's air, vying for one fresh arugula leaf,
Speaker 1: drinking lukewarm instant coffee. So if you're out there, if
Speaker 1: you have two roommates and you're eating a can of
Speaker 1: progresso for dinner, you're living the high life.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of canned food, Maggie is giving me more of
Speaker 1: a show and tell here, which I would take any
Speaker 1: day over a taste and smell.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not the kind of can you would
Speaker 3: feel comfortable actually opening and eating. Wow, it's from the
Speaker 3: European Space Agency, braised calf cheeks with vegetables and balsamic
Speaker 3: vinegar sauce. So I think the European Space Agency maybe
Speaker 3: has a different take on the menu than NASA, but
Speaker 3: NASA they do have scrambled eggs. It looks like your
Speaker 3: dish sponge, so it's cube of yellow that you add
Speaker 3: water and eat. They have tariaki chicken. I think that's
Speaker 3: super popular. Apparently the fish is not a fan favorite
Speaker 3: because your crewmates don't enjoy the smell. It's a tiny capsule,
Speaker 3: so you can imagine that anything you eat or heat
Speaker 3: up and open is going to, you know, add its
Speaker 3: own special aromas into this shared space. I recently encountered
Speaker 3: Jacks's menus, that's the Japanese Space Agency, and I decided,
Speaker 3: if I'm going to space, I'm signing up for their menu.
Speaker 3: All of the foods are made from different research institutes
Speaker 3: and universities, so I think already that's just adding a
Speaker 3: lot of flavor and excitement. And they have soy glazed
Speaker 3: eel and fried chicken and all sorts of different mochi desserts.
Speaker 1: I'm on board, but to file under the only thing
Speaker 1: in the world improving in twenty twenty five is European
Speaker 1: Space Agency astronauts. Sofie I don't knows personal space selections,
Speaker 1: so she tapped the world's most Michelin starred, an internationally
Speaker 1: lauded female chef, and Sophie Peak to craft the bonus
Speaker 1: food items she'll get up there, and they include foie
Speaker 1: gras cream on, toasted brioche with candied lemon, lobster bisk
Speaker 1: with crab and caraway parsnip, veilute with curry and smoked haddock.
Speaker 1: So to the long list of spacecraft words that I
Speaker 1: don't know, add velute. Actually take that back, because I
Speaker 1: looked it up and it's a buttery savory gravy that
Speaker 1: means mother sauce, which probably sounds much more elegant and French. Now.
Speaker 1: Other international bonus items have included maple cookies for a Canadian,
Speaker 1: rice with beef flavored stew and mackerel with karaoke sauce
Speaker 1: for Japanese crew members, and beef ravioli and beef strogging
Speaker 1: off with noodles for the US team. I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: there's so much beef. Did that surprise you at all?
Speaker 1: Like what sources of food were selected?
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be my take, but I think it actually
Speaker 3: didn't surprise me. It felt like, okay, this is again
Speaker 3: sort of telling of how at least the current NASA
Speaker 3: menu is being designed and for who protein is probably
Speaker 3: important in space, not that you can't get that from
Speaker 3: vegetarian food or other options, but it did seem quite Yeah,
Speaker 3: meat heavy, chicken.
Speaker 1: Beef, Yeah, like meat and potatoes.
Speaker 3: Like a kind of classic American menu. Yeah, and the
Speaker 3: most you know, internationals as I said, like karaokey chicken.
Speaker 3: But it's still kind of an American take on that dish.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned something about fish smells, and I
Speaker 1: know that your work deals with the aromas that we
Speaker 1: might be missing on Earth, and this sounds of cooking.
Speaker 1: Do this senses work similarly or is there anything that's blunted.
Speaker 3: It's very different at least from what astronauts report. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're having lunch at the office versus your home
Speaker 3: versus a beautiful beach backdrop, your experience of eating is
Speaker 3: going to change. It might not be something that we
Speaker 3: think about. So eating food and this tiny capsule that's
Speaker 3: louder and smaller than an airplane is already not the
Speaker 3: best place to start. There's physiological changes in the body
Speaker 3: happening to astronauts, so it's something they call space face.
Speaker 3: So they almost look like not quite like a chipmunk,
Speaker 3: but their cheeks puff up, so they have fluids are
Speaker 3: rising in the body in zero G, so they have
Speaker 3: a bit of congestion in their face, which affects how
Speaker 3: they can smell and how they can taste. Some astronauts
Speaker 3: reported that it was almost like if you have a
Speaker 3: cold and you can't really taste your food or things
Speaker 3: just taste a little bit off. And then the second
Speaker 3: thing is just the environment of space. So well, first
Speaker 3: you're eating something out of a plastic bag, including your coffee,
Speaker 3: drinking from a straw, so you're not having this experience
Speaker 3: of sipping your coffee, feeling the warmth on your face.
Speaker 3: The aromas are rising, all these different things. Astronauts tell
Speaker 3: us that this space station smells like a gym walcker
Speaker 3: because it's this tiny space. I mean, I already described
Speaker 3: how their water is made from urine in perspiration. When
Speaker 3: they have to work out for hours of the day,
Speaker 3: what do you do with your sweaty shirt. You can't
Speaker 3: just dry it or wring it out, so they'll often
Speaker 3: hang them in front of the ventilation systems. Oh it daar,
Speaker 3: there's lots going on.
Speaker 1: So a recent article titled What does the International Space
Speaker 1: Station Smell Like? Published by The Hill, divulged that former
Speaker 1: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly likened the odor to a jail
Speaker 1: he once visited, describing it as a combination of aniseptic
Speaker 1: garbage and body odor. He said, we use deodorant, we
Speaker 1: wipe rinse off shower, but there's a little body odor
Speaker 1: going on for sure. He continued, Mostly it's just exercise
Speaker 1: clothes people wear for a couple of weeks without washing.
Speaker 1: He also added per the article that in zero G
Speaker 1: bodily smells such as farts, tend to linker. I should
Speaker 1: note that on all of the menus that I looked at,
Speaker 1: I only saw beans once.
Speaker 3: Oo.
Speaker 1: I can absolutely feel and smell that and almost taste it,
Speaker 1: which is so it's so challenging, But it's a dream,
Speaker 1: so I totally get that. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you you really have to make sure that morale is
Speaker 1: up in order to perform well.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's the stereotype that seems to be true
Speaker 3: that astronauts love hot sauce, and I think that's that's
Speaker 3: one of the reasons just to try to add salt,
Speaker 3: add hot sauce to boost boost that flavor.
Speaker 1: When it comes to those smells and the sounds too.
Speaker 1: I think one thing that's really interesting about your work
Speaker 1: is you know you've been on these flights to test
Speaker 1: out cooking, and I'm like, oh, is there cooking in space?
Speaker 1: I always figured that they were just like eating like
Speaker 1: granola bar or which are too crummy. But I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about the preparation, Like where does the preparation
Speaker 1: come into it.
Speaker 3: The preparation at present is mostly on the ground. So yeah,
Speaker 3: all this food is prepared in different lab contexts andckaged
Speaker 3: and probably put into some kind of quarantine tested, and
Speaker 3: then goes to space. Even the vegetable project I referenced earlier,
Speaker 3: where they're growing herbs and different things in space to
Speaker 3: see how it works. The astronauts usually aren't allowed to
Speaker 3: eat them, and even like touching them or interacting with
Speaker 3: them is extremely restricted. I mean, I won't get into
Speaker 3: toileting on this conversation, but you can imagine there's a
Speaker 3: whole long list of challenges to do with that in
Speaker 3: zero gravity. So they're very concerned with astronauts getting sick,
Speaker 3: getting food poisoning in space, because what would you do?
Speaker 3: So for that reason, most food is not actually prepared
Speaker 3: in space.
Speaker 1: Join me if you will. In reading the twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: NBC News article Vomit in Space, astronaut tells why It's
Speaker 1: not so easy, which number one wrongly assumes that I
Speaker 1: thought it'd be easy, But it continues that TLDR they
Speaker 1: have really good double sealed barf bags, and a twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two pop Side article took a downtown with the
Speaker 1: piece what happens if you get diarrhea in space? The
Speaker 1: thesis is the vacuum toilt per usual plus amodium or
Speaker 1: the more wearable solution a space diaper. And you've created
Speaker 1: something that's like a helmet where you can actually smell
Speaker 1: and feel your food more right, Like, how did that
Speaker 1: design come about?
Speaker 3: My space food helmet came about because I was going
Speaker 3: to go on this zero gravity flight, and because I
Speaker 3: was working with food and liquids and small edible things.
Speaker 3: They were concerned that this could get in the way
Speaker 3: of other people's experiments because this was a research flight.
Speaker 3: So we had I think around twenty different engineers and
Speaker 3: scientists on this flight, all conducting quite serious science experiments,
Speaker 3: and they wanted me to have a glove box, which
Speaker 3: is commonly used in science. So it is basically what
Speaker 3: it sounds like. It's a box, a clear box with
Speaker 3: gloves where you can insert your hands and then you
Speaker 3: don't actually put your hands inside the box, because you're
Speaker 3: really putting your hands inside the gloves inside the box.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense, yeah, And then you can see
Speaker 3: yourself conducting the experiment. Everything is very contained and sterile
Speaker 3: and scientific. I didn't want to use this because it
Speaker 3: didn't really make sense for food. How could I eat
Speaker 3: because my face is over here, my hands are over here.
Speaker 3: So then I decided I will just make a glove
Speaker 3: box around my face, and this became the space food
Speaker 3: helmet where I had and I also just had this
Speaker 3: vision of myself almost like a goldfish, like, you know,
Speaker 3: trying to catch my food with my mouth. So I
Speaker 3: had this giant aquarium. Actually found this aquarium supplier manufacturer
Speaker 3: who produced these different sizes of clear domes and spheres,
Speaker 3: and so I ordered one for my face and then
Speaker 3: three D printed this harness so I could, yeah, put
Speaker 3: my hands inside and they couldn't say no to me
Speaker 3: because I followed all the rules. Was a slightly different format.
Speaker 3: They just wanted to make sure that I had it.
Speaker 3: I had to practice my helmet removal strategy, so if
Speaker 3: I started choking and zero G, I could have this
Speaker 3: quick release or throw, you know, if I threw up,
Speaker 3: which is common on the vomit comet.
Speaker 1: What the vomit comment.
Speaker 3: I had an amazing time. I think everybody on that
Speaker 3: flight was my mouth. I've never smiled so big in
Speaker 3: my life. I was smiling ear to ear. It was
Speaker 3: such a blast. I mean, there's twenty parabolas, so the
Speaker 3: plane is, you know, going in this parabolic maneuver, pitching
Speaker 3: down at forty five degrees and then up at forty
Speaker 3: five degrees, and then you have experience zero G and
Speaker 3: HyperG at the base of those problems, and HyperG is
Speaker 3: also wild experience. I think that's around one point eight G.
Speaker 3: So you feel like you're at the bottom of the
Speaker 3: ocean floor. You have to quickly get to the bottom
Speaker 3: of the plane, lie yourself down. You can barely move
Speaker 3: your head. You feel like you have the weight of
Speaker 3: the world on you. A friend described it to me
Speaker 3: like if you ever had one of those dreams where
Speaker 3: you feel like someone's pinning you down, it kind of
Speaker 3: feels a little bit like that so you have that
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden you start floating, and
Speaker 3: then you have to take advantage of this thirty second
Speaker 3: moment in weightlessness to conduct different aspects of your experiment.
Speaker 3: So I designed mine around a tasting menu, so these
Speaker 3: small bites of things that I could smell something, hear something,
Speaker 3: taste something at these different moments of weightlessness.
Speaker 1: What did you gather from that research, like what worked
Speaker 1: and what didn't.
Speaker 3: I think what I gathered was what you can do
Speaker 3: in thirty seconds of weightlessness is unsurprisingly very limited, so
Speaker 3: that was a huge challenge. I also gathered that being
Speaker 3: a weightlessness is a lot of fun and it's so fascinating,
Speaker 3: but just having to relearn how you use your body
Speaker 3: for the most basic of tasks, including eating, including switching
Speaker 3: a knob, turning on your camera, how you position your elbows,
Speaker 3: and it's just a really surreal experience, almost like being
Speaker 3: a baby and trying to learn how to walk. Your
Speaker 3: legs are not needed, which is also really interesting to
Speaker 3: think about accessibility in space and things that are useful
Speaker 3: here on earth are not necessary in a zerog and
Speaker 3: so you get to think through all of these ways
Speaker 3: of existing differently. So that's like the holistic experience that
Speaker 3: I took from it, and then just the pure joy
Speaker 3: and playfulness that at least through this experiment we were
Speaker 3: able to bring to it, which I think when you
Speaker 3: look at an astronaut's schedule, their entire days planned into
Speaker 3: these fifteen minute increments of different tasks and operations. Their
Speaker 3: time is so valuable. When they're up there on space,
Speaker 3: they barely have time to do anything. And so for experiment,
Speaker 3: same thing. It had to be line by line, exactly
Speaker 3: what you're going to do, but can we intervene and
Speaker 3: leave room for mistakes and leave room for improvisation.
Speaker 1: During one of Maggie's food tests on that zero G
Speaker 1: parabolic flight horribly nicknamed the Vomit Comet, she wanted to
Speaker 1: see if eating rehydrated meals while listening to the sounds
Speaker 1: of crackling frying food improved the experience, or if smelling
Speaker 1: aromas of food enhanced the bland taste.
Speaker 3: And then with astronauts, I conducted some on Earth taste
Speaker 3: tests and interviews with virtual reality to kind of customize
Speaker 3: these different experiences. For one astronaut who grew up near
Speaker 3: an apple orchard, they wanted to have this experience of
Speaker 3: eating outside, So could they you know, eat something freeze
Speaker 3: dried while using this virtual reality to kind of have
Speaker 3: this nostalgic feeling of being back on Earth And at
Speaker 3: least in this context of this experiment, they you know,
Speaker 3: it was highly effective and at least like evoke these
Speaker 3: stories and helped draw out what the importance of culture
Speaker 3: and ritual and food was for them in an environment
Speaker 3: where that's not always part of the discussion.
Speaker 1: Do they eat less up there or more up there
Speaker 1: because they're going through so many calories like exercising to
Speaker 1: keep their muscle mass and phone density, Like do they
Speaker 1: need to eat more? Like is it important for them
Speaker 1: to keep their appetite.
Speaker 3: I think they're eating less up there because they're reporting
Speaker 3: to experience this food fatigue for all the reasons that
Speaker 3: we you know, generally unpleasant. There's another story I love
Speaker 3: of this. These twin astronauts, Scott and Mark Kelly. One
Speaker 3: went to space, one was an astronaut, did not go
Speaker 3: to space, and they wanted to conduct this really interesting
Speaker 3: genetic study on these individuals because they were identical twins,
Speaker 3: so really understanding what happens to the body in space
Speaker 3: compared to you know, the second version of yourself on Earth,
Speaker 3: and they wanted the twin who did not get to
Speaker 3: go to space to have eat the identical menu to
Speaker 3: his brother, and he said, absolutely not. There is no
Speaker 3: way if I'm not going to space, there's no way
Speaker 3: or force them to eat that food. So there were
Speaker 3: some gaps in the being able to understand like what
Speaker 3: really happens to the body with this diet. But I
Speaker 3: think that they're heavily monitored and encouraged to eat specific things,
Speaker 3: and each each meal lists the calories that I'm sure
Speaker 3: is customized for the astronaut and their body type, And
Speaker 3: they would do lots of different testing on Earth before
Speaker 3: they went to space to understand their metabolism and working
Speaker 3: with nutritionists and different consultants, which I think can be
Speaker 3: quite frustrating.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure. I think that putting that kind of
Speaker 1: restriction on yourself when there's not necessarily like a primal
Speaker 1: need to is really difficult.
Speaker 3: Food is so personal, right, How do we give autonomy
Speaker 3: to human beings in space? How do we let people
Speaker 3: make decisions around their own health and well being in
Speaker 3: an environment that's incredibly controlled because you have to jump
Speaker 3: through all these fops, so much bureaucracy, so many safety protocols,
Speaker 3: which I sometimes call these excuses, and how can we
Speaker 3: find ways around that that include a bit more personality
Speaker 3: or something different. Yeah, and that's incredibly exciting.
Speaker 1: What are some of those restrictions, Like, what are some
Speaker 1: of those excuses that you came up against.
Speaker 3: I just think the level and this isn't necessarily an excuse.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of this very much is legitimate
Speaker 3: and necessary. Designing the experiments, I had to log every
Speaker 3: detail to the type of ink that was in my
Speaker 3: pen that I was using to label, the glue, that
Speaker 3: the precise tape that I was using. Of course, like
Speaker 3: the materials if I was thre d printing something, because
Speaker 3: they want to understand, you know, how these materials might
Speaker 3: interact with something else. Is it flammable, is it toxic?
Speaker 3: Could it produce an aroma? So, in the case of
Speaker 3: the experiment I sent to the space station at the
Speaker 3: very last minute, somebody when it was just about to
Speaker 3: be loaded into the SpaceX rocket it was like, it's
Speaker 3: producing some smell and we're very concerned. And then I
Speaker 3: had to remind them, like, this is a food product,
Speaker 3: so it does smell a little bit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just concerning This is fermentation.
Speaker 1: It is food. Can I ask some questions from listeners
Speaker 1: because they had some really good ones? Okay, but before
Speaker 1: we hear you questions, let's donate to a cause of
Speaker 1: theologists choosing this week. Maggie chose astroaccess dot org, which
Speaker 1: is a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion and human
Speaker 1: space exploration and since it's founding in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: astro Access has conducted five microgravity missions in which astro
Speaker 1: Access ambassadors, disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists perform
Speaker 1: demonstrations on board parabolic flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation
Speaker 1: and astro Access says, if we can make space accessible,
Speaker 1: we can make any space accessible. So a donation will
Speaker 1: go to astroaccess dot org thanks to Maggie and sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show.
Speaker 2: Hey Mark, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm not great sore throat.
Speaker 2: I think I'm coming down to cold aw. No, you
Speaker 2: should try a Vogel sore throat spray. It's a natural
Speaker 2: remedy with ecination and sage and can treat symptoms of
Speaker 2: coals and flus, including source roats.
Speaker 1: Perfect I give that a try.
Speaker 2: So we leave sore throats symptoms with a vogel a
Speaker 2: Quena four sore throat spray made from echinationa on sage herbs.
Speaker 2: I'm designed to reach irritated parts of the throat. Available
Speaker 2: from stores on pharmacies nationwide.
Speaker 3: Always read the leaflet.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's float. Some Patreon questions to Maggie MJ. First
Speaker 1: time question asker Sleepy John, Kandell, Olivia Ford, Sonia Bird,
Speaker 1: Curtis dog Inastasia, Press Cedar, Lauren Harder, Glitter Tornado, Ashley Buford,
Speaker 1: and HC wanted to know. HC asked has there ever
Speaker 1: been a vegan person in space before? MJ was like,
Speaker 1: first time question asker are astronauts do they have anything
Speaker 1: specialized for food allergies or religious purposes? Wanted to know
Speaker 1: is it just too bad so sad for these guys?
Speaker 1: Sleepy John asked how do they handle food allergies? How
Speaker 1: do they minimize things? Olivia asked to avoid things that
Speaker 1: might cause dietary discomfort that can't be comfortable in space, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have to take that into consideration or is
Speaker 1: it really like, yo, you want to be an astronaut,
Speaker 1: you better not be seliac.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's that strict. I think things have
Speaker 3: defin improved. There are quite a few menu options. I mean,
Speaker 3: peanut butter is easy to avoid. But let's say it
Speaker 3: was something like soy or something else that could be
Speaker 3: integrated into other products, that would be probably pretty difficult.
Speaker 3: And I think this is where ethics really come into play,
Speaker 3: is especially for you know, thinking about deep space missions,
Speaker 3: whether that's Mars or even just return to the Moon
Speaker 3: or long term space missions of another nature. Can you
Speaker 3: select people based on their ability to tolerate certain foods
Speaker 3: and different conditions. And I'm not sure what the resolution
Speaker 3: on that is, but I think it's super complex.
Speaker 1: So bad news speakan's non dairy folks, egg allergists. NASA
Speaker 1: is knocked down with your dietary restrictions, kind of like
Speaker 1: an elderly ant on Thanksgiving. They're like, it's too hard,
Speaker 1: I'd have to make too many dishes. Not everyone wants
Speaker 1: to eat. But people and space agencies can evolve, and
Speaker 1: in the twenty thirties there is a planned Mars mission
Speaker 1: that will be all that vegetarian. Why is this Lackheed
Speaker 1: Martin Senior Research Scientist Maya Cooper told NBC News that
Speaker 1: meat and dairy don't preserve long enough to take to
Speaker 1: Mars and that quote bringing a cow on the mission
Speaker 1: is not an option. And in terms of something like
Speaker 1: severe celiac that could exacerbate medical conditions through cross contamination,
Speaker 1: you might literally be shit out of luck.
Speaker 3: Luckily, bread's not popular in space, so it's not so
Speaker 3: much of an issue.
Speaker 1: Is it too many crumbs?
Speaker 3: Crumbs, too many crumbs. We don't like crumbs in space, apparently,
Speaker 3: so tortillas are a fan favorite, and I'm sure they
Speaker 3: have lots of gluten free options for that because you
Speaker 3: just wrap it up, you can eat it floating.
Speaker 1: You know, a few people asked about tortillas. Meg Chadsey
Speaker 1: says that they are good friends with someone who was
Speaker 1: a good friend with Zena Cardman, who's an astronaut commander
Speaker 1: of the SpaceX Crew eleven mission that launched the Issis August,
Speaker 1: and they have it on good authority that tortillas are
Speaker 1: a hot commodity up there for their practicality, but they're
Speaker 1: not currently able to ask Zina if space has been
Speaker 1: giving her any weird cravings. So tortillas are indeed a
Speaker 1: popular item up there they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you can, I mean a tortillas, a wrap,
Speaker 3: it's a plate, it's a vessel. You can do anything
Speaker 3: with a tortilla.
Speaker 1: That makes so much more sense than instead of like
Speaker 1: a yeah, like sour dough is not happening up there, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they I mean, tortilla last a long time,
Speaker 3: they pack flat. Genius, Yeah, genius tortillas solving space problems?
Speaker 1: Do you ever find that people have cravings? Anastasia press
Speaker 1: Odyssemus Odyssmus, Peter Scheiss Heckwin and Michael a terrier mind
Speaker 1: wanted to know if there have been recorded instances of
Speaker 1: astronauts who have rogue cravings. Michael wanted to know.
Speaker 3: Rogue cravings sounds very extreme. I mean you definitely hear
Speaker 3: the classic craving for a cold beer. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people could relate to that. But I think
Speaker 3: cold things in general are craved because this rehydration station,
Speaker 3: it's hot water, it's warm water, it's room temperature water,
Speaker 3: but there's not really access to a refrigerator. And I
Speaker 3: never thought about that until it was described to me.
Speaker 3: And you know, cold food might not be for everyone,
Speaker 3: but a refreshing drink or just like something chili and
Speaker 3: fresh things of course, all fresh foods, lettuce, biting into
Speaker 3: something fresh, those are all extremely limited. Chocolate, ice cream,
Speaker 3: real ice cream, pizza. It's like basic stuff.
Speaker 1: The chocolate. Yeah, the chocolate is interesting to me. I
Speaker 1: should get back to that. But Joshua Martin the first
Speaker 1: time question chasker asked, are you allowed to have a
Speaker 1: beer in space? And you get hammered off of two SIPs?
Speaker 1: Do they even allow it up there? Or are they?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you know how expensive this machinery is. You're not
Speaker 1: being buzzed using it.
Speaker 3: There's got to be some contraband things. I mean, our people.
Speaker 3: No one's told me anything. NASA astronauts will not tell
Speaker 3: me anything. But I think they get asked all the time.
Speaker 3: Is there booze? There has to be booze? And then
Speaker 3: you know, do the cosmonauts bring up vodka and everyone
Speaker 3: wants to know? But beer, I think no. I think
Speaker 3: canned you know, carbonated beverages are a little bit challenging
Speaker 3: in space and alcohol generally speaking. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 3: they like working and drinking up there. Yeah, maybe one day.
Speaker 1: I'm sure cosmonauts looks like water.
Speaker 3: Looks like water, Yeah.
Speaker 1: One European Space Agency astronaut actually complimented the chef, saying
Speaker 1: during a feedback survey interview that we all agreed that
Speaker 1: we are enjoying this food, but we have no doubt
Speaker 1: that it would taste much better if we had some
Speaker 1: wine with it as well. But booze is verboten now,
Speaker 1: although in July of nineteen sixty nine buzz Aldrin took
Speaker 1: some Communion wine with him aboard Apollo eleven. But in
Speaker 1: terms of contraband just a side note, it's not worth it,
Speaker 1: just as Gemini three astronaut John W. Young, who confessed
Speaker 1: that quote I hit a sandwich in my spacesuit was corned.
Speaker 1: Beef went to space, the crumbs went everywhere, But back
Speaker 1: to booze. It's not just drunk piloting or regrettable social
Speaker 1: media content at stake here. The chemistry of alcohol could
Speaker 1: throw the whole water recovery system at a whack. So
Speaker 1: don't even think of smuggling a wine cooler or mouth
Speaker 1: wash or aftershave or perfume with you, no matter how
Speaker 1: much stink needs masking. But without red wine, how are
Speaker 1: you going to justify a treat for antioxidants in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, there was a Danish astronaut who developed chocolate
Speaker 1: bars called Spacecrafted alongside a food scientist, and on the
Speaker 1: ingredient list where dark chocolate and nearly seventy other natural
Speaker 1: ingredients such as seaweed, kale, probiotics, magnesium. He didn't just
Speaker 1: bring his own, though, he packed seventy five to share
Speaker 1: with his crewmates, which is like a stellar way to
Speaker 1: win over office people that you'll be very close with
Speaker 1: for half a year. Oh. On that note, Maren Molly
Speaker 1: wanted to know, they said, Danish astronaut Andrea S. Morganson
Speaker 1: brought specialty chocolate bars to the ISS on his twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three mission. I'm curious to know more about those
Speaker 1: than the ingredients. Apparently he also made chocolate moose for
Speaker 1: his crew during the mission. Do certain astronauts say like
Speaker 1: I gotta have this particular chocolate, Like is it tough
Speaker 1: to just bring up a Snickers or something?
Speaker 3: But there's always like a technical term for things, so
Speaker 3: I think they call them like crew select items. Oh,
Speaker 3: so they get their choose from their menu, which it
Speaker 3: could be one hundred or so items, and then they
Speaker 3: have a few items which they can like grocery store items.
Speaker 3: They just have to pass certain tests that they can
Speaker 3: be repackaged appropriately or meet the safety standard needs. So
Speaker 3: they get a little a little sum make them feel special.
Speaker 1: They get a tiny treat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tiny treat. It's like being a kid. You're good
Speaker 3: in the car ride. You can have this later.
Speaker 1: So Brian Schananigans wanted to know. I realized this may
Speaker 1: be superficial and silly, but what about treats? Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just want a piece of cake. Gosh darn it, would
Speaker 1: this be considered a luxury food and therefore not offered?
Speaker 1: Does it help morale?
Speaker 3: It definitely helps morale. I mean, I don't think sadly.
Speaker 3: You can get that piece of cake whenever you want it.
Speaker 3: That's life up there right now. But maybe one day.
Speaker 3: I know they sent like Hognau's bars or Magnum bars.
Speaker 3: I don't know what kind they were, but these ice
Speaker 3: cream bars they got sent up to space in a
Speaker 3: freezer because there was a freezer going up. Oh maybe
Speaker 3: with some blood samples. Like when a freezer is going
Speaker 3: up to the space station with something for science, because
Speaker 3: that's the priority. If there's space, they might just sneak
Speaker 3: something in there for the astronauts. But then when I
Speaker 3: was talking to one of the astronauts who was complaining
Speaker 3: about that again because they apparently they gave them only
Speaker 3: the tiny versions, not the full sized versions. They thought
Speaker 3: that was really cheap of them. Oh, thanks for the
Speaker 3: and here we go. I hope you're hungry for nothing.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the Expanse the Expanse books.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've also I actually have not read them,
Speaker 3: and I have it's a TV show. Also, as far
Speaker 3: as I know, always it okay, it's.
Speaker 1: Sitl let's see. Colby Evans says the Expanse books give
Speaker 1: a lot of page time to bulbs of coffee and
Speaker 1: asked if that is already a thing, and Alison D said,
Speaker 1: there are some fictional instances of space food. Are there
Speaker 1: any fictional instances of space food done right? For example,
Speaker 1: there is kibble as a presumably low cost shelf stable
Speaker 1: option in the Expanse books. It's not described in much
Speaker 1: detail beyond color. There's a red and a white one.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Alison D is curious about your thoughts about
Speaker 1: space kibble.
Speaker 3: Space kibble. It does like dog food, isn't it kibble?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like if?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I have a dog on earth, Right, she
Speaker 1: could be eating different things every day, but we feed her,
Speaker 1: you know, frozen pucks, right, thowed frozen pucks and she's fine.
Speaker 1: The vet is like, this is great for her. Is
Speaker 1: there any reason why human beings couldn't just be like,
Speaker 1: here's your puck with sweet potato and chicken. Have a
Speaker 1: good life.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's kind of what they're doing
Speaker 3: right now, which is a bit sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like kind of what it is. But I've
Speaker 3: never heard of these coffee bulbs. Sounds beautiful. Yeah right,
Speaker 3: I'll have that here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, a coffee bulb does sound like just walking
Speaker 1: down the street with like it. It sounds like it
Speaker 1: would have a good hand feel.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, louck it off a tree? Right?
Speaker 1: What about different like cultural recipes or things that make
Speaker 1: them feel connected to their home or make them feel
Speaker 1: more like themselves. This was also on the minds of
Speaker 1: Rachel Bayer a Ortega, Nick read Storm, Fire Goddess, Gabby Ashimacute,
Speaker 1: Alga Gemmon, Marion Malling, Charlotte Parkinson, Picky Eater, Warlock full
Speaker 1: Time who subsists on various cruels. Nick Reid and brain
Speaker 1: shenanigans Oh and Gibiha Semetier wanted to know about cultural
Speaker 1: considerations and personal preferences and if food choices change based
Speaker 1: on the crew. Is there anything about that, you know,
Speaker 1: let's say that you really miss your mom's curry.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I think there's been a few stories
Speaker 3: that resonated with me. There was Kimchi has been to space.
Speaker 3: I know that there was with the first Korean astronaut.
Speaker 3: Kimchi was especially prepared and freeze dride, so it wasn't
Speaker 3: a living, fermented food, but it was you know, understood
Speaker 3: that this is something of extreme cultural significance and should
Speaker 3: figure out a way for it to go to space.
Speaker 3: In another instance, with JACKSA, the Japanese Space Agency, an
Speaker 3: astronaut wanted to bring sukura flower, not as food, but
Speaker 3: a sukura flower to space to remind them of home,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't allowed to bring this flower. So they
Speaker 3: used a traditional method of preserving this flower, insult and
Speaker 3: almost disguising it as a food product so that it
Speaker 3: could be snuck into the menu and then it could
Speaker 3: arrive in space like this. Oh yeah, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 3: There's a picture of the astronaut with this floating flower
Speaker 3: and this sphere staring lovingly gazing at it, floating and weightlessness.
Speaker 3: And then some of this is food diplomacy too. I mean,
Speaker 3: in the case of Kim Chee, it's I hope that
Speaker 3: the astronaut enjoyed it, but I think it's also decisions
Speaker 3: from these governments and these space agencies to also make
Speaker 3: a statements and bring culture with intention to the space station.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, several people wanted to know about equipment. Sean
Speaker 1: Thomas Kane, Agamemnon, Katrina, Victoria Chaplin, Sheridan Kelly, Caffeine Junkie
Speaker 1: wanted to know. Katrina asked, how do they heat food
Speaker 1: in space? So have a microwave that would probably interfere
Speaker 1: with some sensitive equipment or something, right, Katrina asked, yeah.
Speaker 1: Agamemnon said, like, how do they make things hot? Sean
Speaker 1: wanted to know do electric or gas stovetops? Are they
Speaker 1: even used in space? Is it all just kind of
Speaker 1: hot water based?
Speaker 3: Good question? Today it is mostly water based. I think
Speaker 3: there was this old school method. They had this device.
Speaker 3: It looked like a briefcase, like truly and you'd open
Speaker 3: it up almost like this panini press slash briefcase where
Speaker 3: you would put your food inside, add these heat pads
Speaker 3: and you would close the briefcase, wait you know a minute,
Speaker 3: open it up and eat your food. Or in the
Speaker 3: old can days, I think there was even this little
Speaker 3: hole where you could insert the can and maybe you
Speaker 3: would heat up around the can. But today it's mostly
Speaker 3: mostly water, so no stovetops, no frying, none of those things.
Speaker 1: Sadly so yes, because there's no gravity to influence the
Speaker 1: heat rising, the cool air settling, and the high energy
Speaker 1: draws could like pop a fuse. Ovens have been tough.
Speaker 1: Also food floats. There was an experimental zero G kitchen
Speaker 1: oven used to bake chocolate chip cookies via kind of
Speaker 1: a bizarre branding deal with Double Tree Hotel, but that
Speaker 1: was experimental ovens back on Earth, and there are some
Speaker 1: pouch warmers in use, but for now nothing appetizing. Although
Speaker 1: once again that twenty twenty four Deep Space Food Challenge
Speaker 1: did come up with the prototype of a centrivical canister oven,
Speaker 1: and while the name SATED meaning safe, appliance, tidy, efficient,
Speaker 1: and delicious, could have benefited from an artist's collaboration with
Speaker 1: perhaps a poet or some punch up from a marketing copywriter.
Speaker 1: It does mean that humankind took one giantly toward fresh
Speaker 1: brownies in space. Not there yet, but we're getting closer.
Speaker 1: But with the space food race, China recently whipped our asses,
Speaker 1: releasing a video of astronauts on their Tangong space station
Speaker 1: using a new onboard hot air oven, which is like
Speaker 1: a very advanced and expensive air fryer. They were making
Speaker 1: chicken wings. They look really good.
Speaker 3: I would love a toaster like pop your toast and
Speaker 3: then it floats up into zero G.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's got to be a tortilla toast.
Speaker 3: And just like a little flying discs.
Speaker 1: Kind of like it's flying saucers, right yeah. Lynette da
Speaker 1: Villa val be listening. Curious Nerd wanted to know about hydration.
Speaker 1: Curious Nerds that I've read that astronauts can become easily
Speaker 1: dehydrated due to fluid shifts and low water content of
Speaker 1: food and alterations and physical mechanisms of thirst. Lynette wanted
Speaker 1: to know do they have to drink extra water because
Speaker 1: so many things are dried or I imagine too. Having
Speaker 1: to pee in space is like not the vibe, you know?
Speaker 1: Do they have to drink a lot more water.
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. I'd want to say, yes,
Speaker 3: it seems logical that they would have to drink more,
Speaker 3: and they are working out a lot and in this
Speaker 3: confined space from experience what I know from like arctic
Speaker 3: fieldwork and speaking to a lot of people who do
Speaker 3: this kind of work as well, like there's a problem
Speaker 3: with people almost intentionally or subconsciously dehydrating themselves because, as
Speaker 3: you said, like going to the bathroom is so inconvenient
Speaker 3: that you'll try to avoid it at all costs, So
Speaker 3: you'll like intentionally not water so that you don't have
Speaker 3: to continuously go through the logistics of peeing. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Which brings me to a question I'm happy and proud
Speaker 1: to ask on behalf of Katrina, Emily Kreeger, Jesse Cole,
Speaker 1: and a few other people Meghan Ratcliffe, Kelly Shaver, and
Speaker 1: BOPI wanted to know. Bobi said, what comes in must
Speaker 1: go out? My question is does the amount and type
Speaker 1: of waste created go into consideration of food available? Christina
Speaker 1: wanted to know does a lack of gravity effect processes
Speaker 1: like chewing? Let's see Another person asked about paristalsis, but
Speaker 1: really like to put it simply. Emily Kreeger wanted to
Speaker 1: know part of my asking, but are cruciferous and other
Speaker 1: fart inducing foods purposely avoided in space? Jesse said, I
Speaker 1: heard it smells like farts and bo on the iss.
Speaker 1: How do they help keep people less gassy?
Speaker 3: The menu is very much designed with that in mind.
Speaker 3: That being said, everyone's body is different, so right hard
Speaker 3: to say what's you know, what makes you fart doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily make me fart, So it's a little experimental. But
Speaker 3: the body functions in the same way. When astronauts first
Speaker 3: went to space, they didn't know if they would even
Speaker 3: be able to pee or do any of these spasic functions.
Speaker 3: But in fact, muscles and bodies still have their inner
Speaker 3: mechanics and things go in and come out. As you said,
Speaker 3: but the toilet, I heard the toilet's always breaking, so
Speaker 3: they're very sensitive about that. Yeah, it's not good, so plumber,
Speaker 3: future career, space plumber. With research stations, they always say,
Speaker 3: the most important people are not the scientists. They're the
Speaker 3: people who can you know, the plumber, the electrician, the firefighters,
Speaker 3: and with the space station, they have to be all
Speaker 3: those people in one.
Speaker 1: Right, they need more astro trades people exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trades get a certificate and space trades.
Speaker 1: What about the crumbs? How are they picking those up?
Speaker 1: They don't have a dustbuster out there, right.
Speaker 3: They do have some kind of crazy vacuum because they
Speaker 3: use it's for shaving, so there's these techniques where you
Speaker 3: kind of like shave right into the vacuum. And for food,
Speaker 3: I think it's just try to be clean. You can't
Speaker 3: have those crumbs actually in my space food helmet. This
Speaker 3: was a big problem. I didn't think of this. This
Speaker 3: was a small but large oversight. I had these little
Speaker 3: kind of like nerd candies if you ever had those.
Speaker 3: They were these popping, sizzling candies. Because part of my
Speaker 3: tasting menu was this champagne ritual of just having that
Speaker 3: or like you can't crack the cold beer, but can
Speaker 3: you have this fizzing sensation in your mouth. So I
Speaker 3: opened this container and then all these tiny little candies
Speaker 3: floating up. They got in my nose, they got in
Speaker 3: my ear, they got in my hair. I was picking
Speaker 3: them up for days.
Speaker 1: You're like, that's a no go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like none, we're not very scientific insight.
Speaker 1: You don't know till you try it, right.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah, what planet would you want to have
Speaker 3: dinner on if you could go?
Speaker 1: I mean, it definitely has to be a frozen planet.
Speaker 1: I'm an ice queen, like I can't drink a room
Speaker 1: temperature anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you got to pick accordingly.
Speaker 1: I have to pick accordingly.
Speaker 3: You got to get your space yeady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just have either that are just like exhaust all
Speaker 1: the urine cubes from the supply. What about where would
Speaker 1: you go? Would you need hot stuff?
Speaker 3: Would you do a venus? I I'm just I'm a Saturn.
Speaker 3: I'm a Saturn person all the way. It's just I
Speaker 3: just want those rings. That's all I care about. I
Speaker 3: don't even care about anything else. I just I see
Speaker 3: myself on Saturn. Whatever I'm doing, that's where aldi.
Speaker 1: This is a good question to ask around like the
Speaker 1: holiday table, where are you gonna eat? Where would you
Speaker 1: what would you eat?
Speaker 3: And Saturn's like you know those like a sushi restaurant
Speaker 3: where they have the conveyor belts. Yes, that's me and Saturn.
Speaker 1: They're just going by on the rings. I love that
Speaker 1: the ring is the conveyor belt. You would just look
Speaker 1: off like oh corn flakes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm lazy.
Speaker 1: Well, what's the hardest thing about doing this? What is
Speaker 1: just what bedevils you vexes you?
Speaker 3: I think it's convincing people in certain rooms why something matters,
Speaker 3: and like getting to the heart of a thing, because
Speaker 3: sometimes it's just like is it practical? Is it efficient?
Speaker 3: Can we be productive? Instead of like, okay, we're humans?
Speaker 3: Like it's so basic. But that's the biggest upwards battle
Speaker 3: for the work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is trying to find that Venn diagram of practicality,
Speaker 1: but also like humanity and enjoying something like reminding yourself
Speaker 1: you're not a robot, right and.
Speaker 3: It's not since I don't also want to treat space
Speaker 3: as this frivolous environments and I'm you know, very intentionally
Speaker 3: not engaging my work and space tourism contexts.
Speaker 1: What happens if Blue Origin is like we're doing five
Speaker 1: six hour, five day week long trips and they knock
Speaker 1: on your door to make it fancy as hell.
Speaker 3: Not from Blue Origin, but I've had I have had
Speaker 3: many knocks on my door and it's been tricky. For example,
Speaker 3: in one case, I had someone call me their job
Speaker 3: was astronauts sales. If you can believe it. That was
Speaker 3: their email signature, and their job was to profile top
Speaker 3: billionaires around the world to try to figure out of
Speaker 3: these people, like do they raise cars or are they skydiving?
Speaker 3: How do they spend their money? Would they potentially be
Speaker 3: the profile of a person who might buy a ticket
Speaker 3: on such flights And they thought yes, wow, And they
Speaker 3: thought that this is a family decision. It's going to
Speaker 3: cost a lot of money. It's risky. You know, if
Speaker 3: you have kids or a partner, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 3: to let them know and they might weigh in. I
Speaker 3: was making a space food cookbook at the time that
Speaker 3: was speculative, and they wanted to purchase this book and
Speaker 3: use this book as part of their sales package to
Speaker 3: send to the partner and kids of these people to
Speaker 3: say like, look what your parent is doing space. Look
Speaker 3: what they're going to get to eat in space. And
Speaker 3: that was not for me personally. I've collaborated with lots
Speaker 3: of chefs and I thought, you know, sometimes I think
Speaker 3: we're working together on these scientific goals, and then finding
Speaker 3: out later that in fact, this person wanted to open
Speaker 3: a restaurant in space and quite serious about it, and
Speaker 3: so we kind of have to like backpedal a little bit, like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're I didn't realize we're having very different conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure. It's really a weird time to see,
Speaker 1: you know, innovation and industry and this really really big
Speaker 1: wealth disparity and who has access to things like this.
Speaker 1: The division between kind of science and vanity is really interesting,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: And that people can do these things. It's not you know,
Speaker 3: this job of astronauts sales is an actual legitimate career
Speaker 3: path now, right, Yeah, And you have to pinch yourself, like,
Speaker 3: am I sitting in this room right now? But yeah,
Speaker 3: indeed we are.
Speaker 1: What's the thing that gets you most excited about it?
Speaker 1: Like what Stowis gives you butterflies is a researcher and
Speaker 1: an artist.
Speaker 3: I love whimsy, and I think space has so much
Speaker 3: potential for being whimsical and being imaginative and just stretching
Speaker 3: my mind in ways that I didn't think were possible.
Speaker 3: So that that's really exciting in terms of process and
Speaker 3: then more on like a deeper mission level. I think
Speaker 3: it's the potential to and I do this, you know,
Speaker 3: on Earth as well as as I am a nurse,
Speaker 3: as I am a nurse. I think on my day
Speaker 3: to day when I'm not dreaming, and like working with
Speaker 3: scientists and field workers to think about different ways to
Speaker 3: ask these questions, different ways of integrating knowledge and seeing
Speaker 3: what that leads to is also very exciting. I've had
Speaker 3: some fun experiences, that's for sure, and they continue to
Speaker 3: surprise me every day.
Speaker 1: And it must be fun going out to eat with you,
Speaker 1: because are probably not someone who just wolf sit down
Speaker 1: while they're looking at their phone, right, Like, are you
Speaker 1: always a friend? It's like we have to try this place?
Speaker 1: They're doing something interesting over here. This is a hidden
Speaker 1: gem in a strip mall. Are you that friend?
Speaker 3: I am that friend, but I don't know. I think
Speaker 3: for me, it's more like what's happening in the home.
Speaker 3: So I like going out to restaurants. It's always exciting,
Speaker 3: but I'm equally excited. I've been like this since I
Speaker 3: was a kid, Like I love getting invited to my
Speaker 3: friend's houses and meeting their grandparents and just seeing how
Speaker 3: somebody makes their toast, how do you make your tea?
Speaker 3: How do you cut your lemon? Like there's no right
Speaker 3: or wrong way to do something, but it's always telling
Speaker 3: something about that person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a personal and immediate type of anthropology.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: For sure, I cook very differently when I'm alone versus
Speaker 1: when someone else is watching. I don't watch my vegetable
Speaker 1: like it's good for the micro bio. Don't worry about it. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: my microwave vegetables that are so soggy, and if I'm
Speaker 1: tired and hungry enough, I'm like I would never but
Speaker 1: I will serve them to my own mouth. So exactly
Speaker 1: totally get it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much for taking the time to let me ask you
Speaker 1: so many spacey questions.
Speaker 3: Thank you. This has been such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: So ask spectacular people spacey questions because the information is
Speaker 1: just floating around. It is ready to be consumed. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Maggie for joining and chatting and for
Speaker 1: more on her work. You can see Maggie Coblentz and
Speaker 1: follow her online at Maggie Coblentz. And we're at ologies
Speaker 1: on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward on both
Speaker 1: and we have shorter kid friendly episodes called smologis s
Speaker 1: m O l O g i e S wherever you
Speaker 1: get podcasts, So download a bunch for your upcoming holiday
Speaker 1: road trips, tell your friends Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch
Speaker 1: dot com. You can become patron at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Ologies again. The link to donate to your favorite
Speaker 1: charity and a highly effective global one is GiveDirectly dot
Speaker 1: org slash Ologies. We'll link in the show notes. Aaron
Speaker 1: Talbert admins Theologies podcast Facebook group. Avelene Mallick makes our
Speaker 1: professional transcripts Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noel Dilworth
Speaker 1: keeps us down to Earth as a scheduling producer. Susan
Speaker 1: Hale is our space operations commander as managing director. Susan
Speaker 1: also did an incredible amount of backup research for this episode.
Speaker 1: You thank you to Susan Hale. Couldn't have done this
Speaker 1: one without her, couldn't have done any of them without her.
Speaker 1: And co pilot editor is Jake Chafe, and driving the
Speaker 1: editing shuttle is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland. Audio Nick Thorburn
Speaker 1: banged out the theme song and if you stick around
Speaker 1: to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: This week's It's that I could not be less interested
Speaker 1: in going to space, so consider a slot open first.
Speaker 1: NASA would have me fill out like the most preliminary survey.
Speaker 1: One of the questions would be like how much do
Speaker 1: you have to pee? And I have to check the
Speaker 1: box like all the time. Secondly, once again, I'm unqualified
Speaker 1: and I would never pass the psych tests or the
Speaker 1: drug tests if I'm being honest. He gummy before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: But my secret, my other secret is I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: this rehydrated ice cream sandwich. I've had it soaking as
Speaker 1: i've been recording, and don't worry, I'm gonna cut out
Speaker 1: any sounds of eating. All right, I got you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try this out though right now. That's actually not
Speaker 1: that bad. I'm being honest with you, completely honest. It
Speaker 1: just tastes like a melted ice cream sandwich. Wow, how
Speaker 1: about that? It tastes like when you make ice cream soup.
Speaker 1: I think I also put a little bit too much
Speaker 1: room temperature water, not optimal. Use less water. You put
Speaker 1: this in the fridge. Really not that bad and it
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt your teeth like eating styrofoam. So if you
Speaker 1: have astronal ice cream sitting in your cabinet and you
Speaker 1: feel bad throwing it away because it was a gift,
Speaker 1: pour a little hot water on that, let it chill
Speaker 1: in the fridge. You got yourself a medium cold ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich. Good to know, okay, pacodermictolage, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, Yeah, Technology, meteorology,
Speaker 1: at batology, nampology, seriology, pileology.
Speaker 3: I need some space.