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Who produces space food? Features of "space eaters"

Space products are very different from the food we are used to, primarily in their composition, production and packaging. In this review you will read how the best chefs and scientists developed space food, see space products different countries and find out how many calories it is daily ration modern Russian cosmonaut.

The first person to try space food directly in orbit, of course, was Yuri Gagarin. Despite the fact that his flight took only 108 minutes and the astronaut did not have time to get hungry, the launch plan included eating.

After all, this was the first manned flight into Earth orbit, and scientists did not know at all whether the astronaut would be able to eat normally in conditions of zero gravity, or whether the body would accept food. Tubes, previously successfully tested in aviation, were used as food packaging. There was meat and chocolate inside.

Yuri Gagarin before the start

And already German Titov ate three full meals during the 25-hour flight. His diet consisted of three dishes - soup, pate and compote. But upon returning to Earth, he still complained of dizziness from hunger. So in further specialists for space nutrition started developing special products, which will be the most nutritious, effective and well absorbed by the body.

Tubes with the first Soviet space food

In 1963, a separate laboratory appeared at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, completely dealing with the issue of space nutrition. It still exists today.

Participants of the Soviet Apollo-Soyuz flight eat food

The Americans took a different route during their first flights. The first space food for US astronauts was dried food that had to be diluted with water. The quality of this food was unimportant, so experienced space explorers tried to secretly bring normal food with them into the rocket.

There is a known case when astronaut John Young took a sandwich with him. But eating it in zero gravity turned out to be incredibly difficult. And the bread crumbs, scattered across spaceship, turned the life of the crew members into a nightmare for a long time.

By the eighties, Soviet and American space food had become quite tasty and varied. The USSR produced about three hundred types of products available to astronauts during the flight. Now this number has been halved.

The first set of American space food

Technologies

Nowadays, the famous tubes of space food are practically not used. Nowadays, products are stored in vacuum packaging, having previously undergone a freeze-drying procedure.

This labor-intensive process involves removing moisture from frozen products using a special technology, which makes it possible to almost completely (95 percent) preserve them. nutrients, microelements, vitamins, natural smell, taste and even original form. Moreover, such food can be stored without any damage to quality for up to five (!) years, regardless of temperature and other storage conditions.

Scientists have learned to dry almost any food in this way, even cottage cheese. The latter, by the way, is one of the most popular products on the International Space Station. Foreign cosmonauts almost line up for the opportunity to try this dish, which is part of the diet of their Russian colleagues.

Modern Russian space food

Russian space food

The Russian cosmonaut's daily diet is 3,200 calories, divided into four meals. At the same time daily meals One person in orbit costs our space department 18-20 thousand rubles. And the point is not so much in the cost of the products themselves and their production, but in high price for the delivery of goods into space (5-7 thousand dollars per kilogram of weight).

As mentioned above, in the eighties of the twentieth century there were about three hundred types of Soviet space products. Now this list has been reduced to one hundred and sixty. At the same time, new dishes are constantly appearing, and old ones are becoming history. For example, in recent years The astronauts' diet included hodgepodge, mushroom soup, stewed vegetables with rice, green bean salad, Greek salad, canned poultry, omelette with chicken liver, chicken meat with nutmeg and other products.

And among the long-lived cosmic dishes that have existed to our time since the sixties, we can mention Ukrainian borscht, chicken fillet, entrecotes, beef tongue and special bread that doesn’t crumble.

A significant drawback is the lack of a refrigerator and microwave oven. So our cosmonauts, unlike their foreign colleagues, do not have access to semi-finished and frozen foods, including fresh vegetables and fruits.

American space food

But there is a refrigerator in the American segment of the ISS, which makes their diet more rich and varied. However, in lately Americans also began to move away from convenience foods to freeze-dried foods. And if earlier their ratio was 70 to 30, now it is 50 to 50.

Space food kit for Space Shuttle crews

Americans eat hamburgers in orbit too

Apart from the ability to use semi-finished products by heating them in the microwave, American space food is not much different from Russian food. The only difference is in the layout of the dishes, and the main products used are the same. But there is also a certain specificity. For example, Americans prefer citrus fruits, while Russians love apples and grapes.

American astronauts love citrus fruits

Other countries

But for astronauts from other countries, their space nutritionists sometimes create completely unusual for us, and even downright exotic products. For example, Japanese space explorers, even in orbit, cannot do without sushi, noodle soup, soy sauce and many types of green tea.

Chinese taikunauts, however, eat fairly traditional food - pork, rice and chicken. And the biggest entertainers in terms of space ration are considered French. They take with them into orbit not only everyday food, but also delicacies, for example, truffle mushrooms. There is a known case when specialists from Roscosmos refused to allow a French astronaut to transport blue cheese to Mir, fearing that it might disturb the biological situation on the orbital station.

It should be separately noted that all space dishes have artificially increased levels of calcium. Living in conditions of weightlessness negatively affects its amount in human body, which promises significant problems with bones and the musculoskeletal system as a whole. So nutritionists are trying to at least partially combat this problem at the level of a special diet.

Korean girl astronaut having lunch in orbit

Space food of the future

For the foreseeable future significant changes There are no plans for space food preparation technologies. Unless the diet will change a little - new dishes will appear and some old ones will go away. The menu of cosmonauts and astronauts will be formed according to the needs and tastes of a particular person. And NASA has already announced that it is considering the possibility of creating a separate vegetarian menu for participants in the Mars mission, the official launch of which could begin in the next two decades.

This mission, by the way, involves using not only space food prepared on Earth, but also growing food directly on board the ship. Scientists have been dreaming about this for many decades. And in the near future, their expectations may come true. After all, the preservation of dairy and meat dishes is not enough for a mission lasting several years. Therefore, the most logical way out of the situation is considered to be the appearance of a vegetable garden for growing fresh vegetables and fruits.

NASA experimental potato farm

As you know, astronaut food is considered the most healthy food. And this is no coincidence. After all, the conditions in which the astronauts find themselves long time, truly extreme. This is stress for the body, therefore, you need to be very careful about nutrition.

Healthy food rich in vitamins and microelements for astronauts passes pre-treatment to remove various microbes and other harmful substances.

The range of products for astronauts in different countries varies. It should be noted that NASA has the most diverse selection. But at the same time, the differences with ordinary earthly food are quite insignificant.

They prepare food for the astronauts, of course, on Earth, then the astronauts take it with them into space, it is already packaged in jars. As a rule, food is packaged in tubes. Initially, the material for creating tubes was aluminum, but today it has been replaced by multilayer laminate and co-extrusion. Other containers for food packaging - cans and bags from various polymer materials. The diet of the first cosmonauts was very meager. It consisted of only a few types of fresh liquids and pastes.

The main rule of lunch for astronauts is that there should not be any crumbs, as they will scatter and it will be impossible to catch them later, although they can get into respiratory tract astronaut That’s why they bake special bread for astronauts that doesn’t crumble. This is why bread is produced in small, specially packaged pieces. Before eating, it is heated, like other products that are in tin packages. In zero gravity, while eating, astronauts must also ensure that pieces of food do not fall, otherwise they will float around the ship.

Also, when preparing food for astronauts, cooks should not use legumes, garlic and some other foods that can cause bloating. The thing is that in the spaceship there is no fresh air. In order to breathe, the air is constantly purified, and if the astronauts have gases, this will create unnecessary difficulties. For drinking, special glasses were invented, from which astronauts suck the liquid. Everything would simply float out of an ordinary cup.

The food is pureed, which looks like baby food, but the taste is suitable for adults. For example, the diet of astronauts includes such dishes as: meat with vegetables, prunes, cereals, currant, apple, plum juice, soups, chocolate cheese; with the development of this area of nutrition, astronauts were able to eat even real cutlets, sandwiches, roach backs, fried meat, fresh fruit, as well as strawberries, hash browns, cocoa powder, turkey in gravy, steak, pork and beef briquettes, cheese, chocolate cakes... The menu is quite varied, as you can see. The main thing is that their food must be in the form of a dried concentrate, sealed and sterilized using irradiation. After this treatment, the food is reduced to almost the size of chewing gum. All you need to do is fill it up hot water, and you can refresh yourself. Now our ships and stations even have special stoves designed for heating space food.

Food to be freeze-dried is first cooked and then quickly frozen in liquid gas (usually nitrogen). Then it is divided into portions and placed in a vacuum chamber. The pressure there is usually maintained at 1.5 mmHg. Art. or lower, the temperature is slowly increased to 50-60 ° C. At the same time, ice from frozen food sublimates, that is, turns into steam, bypassing the liquid phase - the food is dehydrated. In this way, water is removed from the products, which at the same time remain intact, with unchanged chemical composition. This way you can reduce the weight of food by 70%. The composition of food is constantly changing and expanding.

But, before any dish is added to the menu, it is given to the astronauts themselves for preliminary tasting; this is required for evaluation taste qualities, which is carried out on a 10-point scale. If a given dish is rated five or less, it is accordingly excluded from the diet. The daily menu of astronauts is calculated for eight days, that is, it is repeated every subsequent eight days.

There is no feeling in space strong changes in the taste of the dishes. But it happens that someone thinks sour is salty, and salty, on the contrary, is sour. Although this is rather an exception. It has also been noticed that in space the unloved ordinary life dishes suddenly become unexpectedly preferred.

Who among you wouldn’t want to fly into space if they would feed him like this? By the way, space food can be purchased to order; today you can even find it. If anyone is interested, you can try it and share it with us in the comments.

Andrey Vedernikov on how to make food for astronauts a commercial product for a wide audience

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Space food has recently become available not only to astronauts, but also to everyone - soups, main courses and desserts in tubes are produced by the Space Nutrition Laboratory company and are sold in vending machines and via the Internet. Space food under the Spacefood brand is produced in the same place where the entire orbital diet of domestic cosmonauts is obtained. About what is in the tubes and whether such a product will be sold in the regions, the Five O’Clock project told head of the company Andrey Vedernikov.

39 years old, entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of the company "Space Nutrition Laboratory". The company's products - various dishes for astronauts in tubes under the brand - are sold through vending machines in iconic places in Moscow and through the Kosmoeda online store.

“We work with state-owned enterprises”

Before the Space Nutrition Laboratory, I had several projects, including in trade. Was the deputy director of large stores, general director grocery store. He worked in the restaurant business, in the production of cosmetics, in many places - both as an owner and as a manager. At the Laboratory, I am also a co-founder and director.

The company appeared in 2011, and the first products of the Spacefood series only in 2015. The preparatory period was quite difficult. We work with state-owned enterprises - the Research Institute of Food Concentrate Industry and Special Food Technology, as well as the Biryulevsky Experimental Plant. Everything they invent and develop is the intellectual property of Russia and belongs to the state.

The plant produces food for astronauts, and we don’t have very many of them, so the volumes were small. It took four years to enter the regular “terrestrial” market. We purchased additional equipment, but it is still not all involved, because it is a closed facility, there are a million approvals. Although we did expand the site a little.

What is the interest of the research institute and the plant? Firstly, it is the popularization of space. Secondly, they also earn money. By the way, according to the contract, they cannot work with anyone except me.

“We sold a two-month supply in 10 days”

The first devices with space food appeared at VDNKh. I know the director of VDNKh, I came and talked: “Let’s try? - Let's". There were no tricky schemes or calculations; we weren’t looking for the ideal point on the map. At VDNKh it seemed logical and reasonable: they are about achievements, about history, about the country. They had a “Space” pavilion, and we stood there.

The shelf life of a tube of space food from Spacefood is 18 months. The cost of one tube is 300 rubles.

I don’t even remember how much we wanted to sell then - we just decided to try how it would go. It’s clear that astronaut food is cool, but it’s not a replacement for lunch. For 300 rubles you can go to the canteen. In general, it was not clear. As a result, in the first ten days we sold out two months of supplies. There were natural queues for an hour, it was a bomb. I think they sold more than 5,000 tubes then.

Later we moved to the neighboring Polytech pavilion, where the Buran museum complex opened. In "Cosmos" the exhibition is simply inconsistent: it appears and then disappears. We are also standing in the Planetarium. In total we have about ten sites. The Planetarium and VDNKh bring the greatest profits.

We went to the shopping center - the Vesna and MEGA Belaya Dacha shopping centers. I can say that we still do not have an impulse product. A person can always buy coffee for 150 rubles, but a tube of space food for 300 is no longer possible. So shopping centers as a sales channel don’t really work that well. Let's just say they don't bring the expected results.

We thought about universities. Universities are not the most obvious place, but it’s worth a try, a lot of people study there. Naturally, students will not stop going to canteens and buffets, but they will definitely have an alternative. In addition, no matter how accessible and fast fast food is, sometimes it is inconvenient to eat. And Spacefood is convenient to eat in any circumstances, even at a lecture, or when you need a quick, extremely quick snack.

I'm interested in any platform. Yes, judging by sales, the product sells best in thematic pavilions and museums about space. For example, they are already waiting for us in the museums and planetariums of Samara and Kaluga, there are many requests from all over Russia. But who said that the product won’t work in other places? We have to look.

“I understand that our price is “biting”

I understand that our price – 300 rubles per tube – is “biting”. But the prices for space food are generally high. Before us, it was sold in space museums, and tubes there cost 500 rubles. We have reduced the price by reducing the volume of the tube. Classic version, the same one for astronauts is 160 grams, but our tube is 115 grams. That is, a little smaller, but inside they are absolutely identical in composition.

This important topic. While we make money at this price, we try to make the product popular and do not raise prices. The problem is that due to delivery costs, it will be more difficult to work with such a price in the regions - we are losing in margin. This is such a difficult situation.

There are two options: either cover the costs with shipment volumes, or reduce the volume of the tube for some products. By the way, there is not only an economic reason for this. I am increasingly receiving feedback that 115 grams is too much, but 70–75 would be just right. Plus an advantage at airports: now Spacefood can only be delivered in duty free, that is, when a person has already cleared customs. Oh, there is a third option. The tube itself is Finnish - no one has made this size in Russia. Now one St. Petersburg company has ordered equipment - especially for us - and such tubes will appear. This will also affect the price.

How do “filling” and “packaging” fit into the price structure? The packaging is very expensive, the filling is not very much (20–25% of the price). If you break down these 115 grams of products by composition, you get absolutely nothing. The most expensive thing is the production technology itself. For example, it takes 7.5 hours to prepare borscht for 500 tubes. This is a huge energy consumption, the temperature reaches up to 120 degrees. And, of course, man-hours. Here, as in space, everything is produced by hand, every gram of meat is processed.

At the same time, the technology belongs to the state, and it is impossible to buy it back. There are requests from abroad. From Canada, England, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Belgium. But the situation there is such that they will have to certify the product in their market. To do this, they need to check the product for safety, get all necessary documentation from the manufacturer, have access to everything. But then the technology will be disclosed, which, as you understand, is excluded. That is, you can buy us, but you cannot.

"Borsch comes first"

In terms of sales, our top seller is borscht. On the second - meat puree. We thought everyone would sort out the cottage cheese, we were counting on the children, but no - borscht and meat. After all, Russians are meat-eaters, we must not forget about this.

We don’t have any completely failed positions, but green cabbage soup, for example, doesn’t sell very well. They can definitely be produced less, although they will still remain in stock. Maybe buyers think it's something vegetarian? But in space there are no dishes for vegetarians, there is meat broth.

Currently, the Spacefood line includes eleven dishes in tubes: borscht, kharcho, rassolnik, green cabbage soup, marinated lamb, pork with vegetables, meat puree, as well as four types of cottage cheese - with apricot, blackcurrant, sea buckthorn and apple puree.

If some manufacturer releases something that looks like space food in a toothpaste tube, it will be a la “space food,” but not real space food. In my opinion, then the whole point of the product immediately disappears. What is the value of a fake?

I don’t promote Spacefood at all. Absolutely. All that is happening now in advertising is journalists themselves coming out, calling, asking, asking for comments. With this we close the issue. There is no point in advertising anything specifically.

I am ready to install devices, and for this I do not need to spend money on advertising. Plus, production won’t cope if we advertise something widely. There will be a flood of orders that we will not be able to stop or satisfy yet.

Currently, the diet of astronauts can easily be compared with the menu of a good restaurant. In four meals, astronauts eat about 1.6 kilograms of food, consuming 3200 liters.

10th place: When Gagarin flew into space, he was also fed a little. He was given homogenized products in tubes. Gagarin had only nine products. But he didn't eat in space because he spent only 108 minutes there.

9th place: Now freeze-dried products are sent into space. Sublimation is the dehydration of a product, first by freezing to minus 50 degrees, and then, under vacuum conditions, drying: within 32 hours it is heated to plus 50-70 degrees. During sublimation, ice does not turn into water, but immediately evaporates, and valuable substances, usually released with moisture, remain in place. Products are sublimated to reduce their weight. Therefore, astronauts need to add water to their food before eating.

8th place: One of the most difficult freeze-dried foods to prepare is tea. And one of the most delicious, according to astronauts, is freeze-dried cottage cheese with cranberries and nuts. It tastes like fresh.

7th place: Space products are the safest and most natural. They contain no chemicals or synthetic additives: it is unknown how they will behave in space, where, among other things, they are present solar radiation and magnetic waves.

6th place: There were no first courses on the menu of American astronauts before. 70% of the astronauts' meals consisted of prepared foods and only 30% of the dishes were made specially.

5th place: The most difficult thing in Space is with water. On spaceships, complete water regeneration is carried out: even waste products are purified and turned back into water.

4th place: The bread is packaged in packages that are enough for exactly one bite. The fact is that flying crumbs can get into the respiratory tract. Bread is supplied by the Institute of Baking Industry, in vacuum packaging. The astronauts warm it up.

3rd place: Food is heated in a special device for this on the work table. And cans are heated in it - in closed. And you just pour hot water into freeze-dried food.

2nd place: Foreigners are trying to bring into space the products to which they are accustomed. True, they are checked first. When the Frenchman was flying, one cheese was not allowed - it was too biologically active.

1st place: To lift 1 kg of weight into space costs from 5 to 10 thousand dollars. A person needs 1.5-1.7 kg of food per day. So an astronaut’s food costs from 10,000 rubles a day.

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Recipe for the popular Mexican burrito dish for preparation on the ISS it looks like this:

"To make a burrito, open a package of tortillas and let one out. Brush the sauce on the tortilla and let it go. Then remove the package of stuffing. While you open it, make sure the tortilla doesn't fly too far, or ask a colleague to catch it. Throw the tortilla and stuffing towards each other friend. When they meet, grab the tortilla and take out the package of cheese. If the minced meat is well adhered, you can throw the cheese directly onto the tortilla without fear that the structure will fall apart. When the cheese is finished, take the almost finished burrito and fold the edges while eating. Do not allow cheese or minced meat to float out of the burrito - they are very difficult to clean off the surface of the air filter."

According to the developers, all products retain their original taste and aroma, but the inhabitants of the ISS have to take their word for it, since as a result of a long stay on the station, their taste sensations and sense of smell. The fact is that due to weightlessness, the nasal canals become clogged. Filtered recirculated air makes fun of odors. Cans and plastic packaging also do not contribute to the olfactory pleasure of food. After months in orbit, hot sauce or a clove of garlic seems like heavenly food.

At dawn space age Mostly citizens of the USSR and the USA flew into space. Over time, the national composition of the inhabitants of space stations expanded. Astronauts from different countries took with them traditional dishes. For example, in 2008, Japanese Takao Doi delighted his colleagues with very unusual foods that astronauts tried to eat with chopsticks.

By the way, space food specialists have almost completely abandoned the use of tubes in recent years. Now foods are placed in plastic bags from which they can be eaten with special elongated spoons.

Despite the variety of dishes, after a few months they all become boring. To brighten up the life of the inhabitants of the ISS, their relatives send them “something tasty” with every opportunity (shuttle or Progress truck). Sometimes packages from home include not only food, but also alcohol, which is strictly prohibited in space. Mission managers turn a blind eye to violations of the rules, since astronauts usually do not allow themselves to do too much. Most often, the orbital wine list consists of beer and cognac. The inhabitants of the ISS prefer to drink alcohol from syringes without needles - so as not to miss the mouth.

And in Kyiv they opened the Cosmoport restaurant with real space food. The restaurant's interior reproduces a real intergalactic liner from the films. For example, instead of ordinary trays there are space boxes - heat-resistant stands with a lid. Dishes in such a box are located in thermal recesses. While the box is closed, the temperature of all dishes - both roast and ice cream - remains unchanged. It’s convenient to eat from a thermal box, but especially such a space tray, according to restaurateurs, should please kids.

Launching a person into space is a difficult matter. Especially considering that this living creature who needs to eat, sleep and relieve his natural needs. And today we will talk about the first point of this program, about how the best scientists, engineers and chefs from different countries worked on the problem food for astronauts. Our review concerns what the conquerors of the vast expanses of the Universe have eaten, are eating and will eat in the future.

A little history

And already German Titov ate three full meals during the 25-hour flight. His diet consisted of three dishes - soup, pate and compote. But upon returning to Earth, he still complained of dizziness from hunger. So in the future, space nutrition specialists began developing special products that would be as nutritious, effective and easily absorbed by the body as possible.

There is a known case when astronaut John Young took a sandwich with him. But eating it in zero gravity turned out to be incredibly difficult. And the bread crumbs, scattered throughout the spaceship, turned the life of the crew members into a nightmare for a long time.

Technologies

Nowadays, the famous tubes of space food are practically not used. Nowadays, products are stored in vacuum packaging, having previously undergone a freeze-drying procedure.

This labor-intensive process involves removing moisture from frozen products using a special technology, which allows them to almost completely (95 percent) preserve their nutrients, microelements, vitamins, natural smell, taste and even their original shape. Moreover, such food can be stored without any damage to quality for up to five (!) years, regardless of temperature and other storage conditions.

Russian space food

The Russian cosmonaut's daily diet is 3,200 calories, divided into four meals. At the same time, daily food for one person in orbit costs our space department 18-20 thousand rubles. And it’s not so much the cost of the products themselves and their manufacture, but the high price of delivering goods into space (5-7 thousand dollars per kilogram of weight).

As mentioned above, in the eighties of the twentieth century there were about three hundred types of Soviet space products. Now this list has been reduced to one hundred and sixty. At the same time, new dishes are constantly appearing, and old ones are becoming history. For example, in recent years, the diet of astronauts has included hodgepodge, mushroom soup, stewed vegetables with rice, green bean salad, Greek salad, canned poultry, omelette with chicken liver, chicken with nutmeg and other products.

And among the long-lived cosmic dishes that have existed to this day since the sixties, we can mention Ukrainian borscht, chicken fillet, entrecotes, beef tongue and special bread that does not crumble.

A significant drawback is the absence of a refrigerator and microwave oven in the Russian part of the International Space Station. So our cosmonauts, unlike their foreign colleagues, do not have access to semi-finished and frozen foods, including fresh vegetables and fruits.

American space food

But there is a refrigerator in the American segment of the ISS, which makes their diet more rich and varied. However, recently Americans have also begun to move away from semi-finished products to freeze-dried products. And if earlier their ratio was 70 to 30, now it is 50 to 50.

Other countries

Chinese taikunauts, however, eat fairly traditional food - pork, rice and chicken. And the French are considered the biggest entertainers in terms of space diet. They take with them into orbit not only everyday food, but also delicacies, for example, truffle mushrooms. There is a known case when specialists from Roscosmos refused to allow a French astronaut to transport blue cheese to Mir, fearing that it might disturb the biological situation on the orbital station.

It should be separately noted that all space dishes have artificially increased levels of calcium. Living in conditions of weightlessness negatively affects its amount in the human body, which promises significant problems with bones and the musculoskeletal system as a whole. So nutritionists are trying to at least partially combat this problem at the level of a special diet.

Space food of the future

There are no plans for significant changes in space food preparation technologies in the foreseeable future. Unless the diet will change a little - new dishes will appear and some old ones will go away. The menu of cosmonauts and astronauts will be formed according to the needs and tastes of a particular person. And NASA has already announced that it is considering the possibility of creating a separate one, the official launch of which could begin in the next two decades.

This mission, by the way, involves using not only space food prepared on Earth, but also growing food directly on board the ship. Scientists have been dreaming about this for many decades. And in the near future, their expectations may come true. After all, the preservation of dairy and meat dishes is not enough for a mission lasting several years. Therefore, the most logical way out of the situation is considered to be the creation of a vegetable garden for growing fresh vegetables and fruits.