Four Month Mars Food Study Wraps Up

After four months in a mock space habitat in Hawaii, participants in a study to determine how best to feed astronauts (HI-SEAS) on a mission to Mars emerged yesterday. A few days ago, the mission commander was interviewed in Astrobiology Magazine, noting the most successful foods: "There's also been a lot of really good cooked dishes. Some of our crew members are accomplished cooks, and every week there are different surprises. Some success meals were Russian borscht, Moroccan tagine, enchilasagna, seafood chowder, and fabada asturiana. Wraps work really well: we combine tortillas, different vegetables, Velveeta cheese, and sausage or canned fish into ever-changing combinations. This is actually in line with the success of tortillas at the ISS. In general, the dehydrated and freeze-dried vegetables are a real success. They're used on a daily basis in almost every meal." The crew kept weblogs, and did other things than just sit around and eat: some studied robotics and they went on a few simulated EVAs.

Fucking Great. How much did this cost?

[PvtVoid]

All they learned was what anybody who does a lot of camping already knows: tortillas keep well, freeze-dried vegetables are a good way to add variety to a dreary and repetitive menu of preserved meat.

NASA for the fail. Again.

Re:Borscht?

[JaredOfEuropa]

We've already sent robots. If we're now in a position to send men, then let's get our ass to Mars. Why? Because it's hard, and because we can. Good for science and engineering. And humans may be fragile but they are also versatile. Won't a manned mission be able to do more than a robotic one?

As for expenses: we have the money and the resources. If we spend only a fraction of what we waste on useless crap, our space program should be flush with cash.

Re:Fabada in a spaceship...

[gstoddart]

What causes some people to have such weaponised digestive tracts?

Lack of exposure, mostly.

If you don't eat something like that regularly, your body has a hell of a time trying to deal with it. If you haven't built up the right stuff to digest it, some of those starches cause some pretty unpleasant side effects. As a long-ish term vegetarian, I've definitely found I have to go through a periodic adjustment period to something new. And it can definitely be a little toxic.

It's like spicy food ... if you eat it all the time, your body can probably deal with it. If you don't, well, you might need some aloe the next day. ;-)

Re:Borscht?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. The solution isn't to spend a hundred billion dollars to put a man in a suit on Mars. It's to spend a hundred billion dollars on better robotics. Why? Because better robotics have a fuckload more uses, both in planetary exploration and here on Earth.

The other hilarity about the hubris of manned planetary exploration is that after Mars, there's not a lot of places where it's remotely practical to put a human, no matter how good the suit. Venus and Mercury will never be home to man (terraforming isn't remotely a realistic option) and beyond Mars, it gets real cold and lonely, real quick. I'd much rather we had far more advanced robots roaming the moons of the gas giants than trying to get a human comfortable while wandering about on a surface that never gets above -150 C and gives more than a lethal (500+ rems) dose of radiation every single day.