Anyone loves to eat well. At the same time, many of us probably thought about how astronauts eat in zero gravity. What are the features of eating in space, as well as what difficulties or even dangers lie in wait for astronauts during breakfast, lunch or dinner in Earth orbit.
Gagarin's lunch
Russian scientists became concerned with the problem of nutrition in space during the flight of Yuri Gagarin. A special menu was developed for him, consisting of several dishes. Since no one knew how long his flight would actually last, Yuri Alekseevich was supplied with food in abundance. Several dishes, including borsch, potatoes, cutlets and juices were packed in special tubes. Nevertheless, the first astronaut tasted only liquid pasta, as well as chocolate sauce, and then only as an experiment. The first one who managed to eat normally in the planet's orbit was German Titov, whose flight lasted twenty-five hours. The astronaut tasted the vegetable puree soup with gusto, and for the second he consumed liver pate, washed down with black currant juice. At the same time, as the second cosmonaut of the Soviet Union later noted in his interviews, he ate three times,but still hungry.
Taking into account his wishes and comments by experts in space nutrition, a lengthy menu was prepared for Soviet cosmonauts. It included: pies with fish, beef jellied tongue, fire cutlets, Ukrainian borscht, entrecotes, vegetable sauces, chicken fillet, two dozen varieties of juices and fruit purees. It is noteworthy that twenty years after the flight of the first man into space, Soviet cosmonauts could choose their food in orbit from two hundred dishes. At the same time, it can be noted that domestic cosmonauts ate wholesome food, while American astronauts ate freeze-dried tasteless food made from pieces of food concentrates, powders and liquids. At the same time, it can be noted that the very procedure of nutrition, in particular the constriction of the throat muscles, in space occurs the same as on Earth. This was confirmed by Yuri Gagarin,so did the first US astronaut John Glen. The only difference is that food tastes completely different in space.
Operation "Lunch"
At the same time, it should be noted that if the questions of how food should be packaged, its composition and ingredients were resolved relatively quickly in the USSR, then the food procedure itself turned out to be complicated and looked like a scientific experiment. During the first flights, food was simply squeezed into the mouth from tubes that looked like toothpaste. But, so you could eat for a day, two, a week, no more. Very quickly, the inhabitants of the orbital stations began to ask scientists for normal food and human conditions for its consumption. As a result, before the flight, each astronaut began to choose his own personal menu, designed for a week. Today, even fresh fruit can be tasted in orbit. The more difficult question is with the very eating. It is delivered into space in special containers that contain food packed in cans,subjected to heat treatment alternately extremely high and then low temperatures. During lunch, these cans are placed in special slots on the kitchen table. In them, they are heated, and then opened with ordinary can openers. They eat food with spoons, just like on Earth.
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Harder with soups and compotes. Packages with concentrates of these dishes are connected to a special installation, into which the device adds the required amount of water. Drink liquid directly from this bag. The most difficult thing is with bread. The fact is that any crumb in the conditions of an orbital station can cause tremendous harm by damaging the equipment or getting into the eye or ear of an astronaut. To prevent this from happening, a special fan is built into the "kitchen table", which sucks in and destroys bread crumbs. Drinking is no less dangerous. In zero gravity, the fluid in the human body tries to rise, causing a blockage in the nose and swelling of the face. They fight this unpleasant effect by taking a certain body position while drinking. It is interesting to note that the calorie content of foods is taken into account separately. A man in space should consume 3200 kilocalories a day, while a woman should consume 2800.
Dmitry Sokolov
