High School Juniors Create 'Flavor Strips' For Astronauts 23
Cazekiel writes "The sense of taste for astronauts is dulled by microgravity, but four high schoolers participating in the Spirit of Innovation Challenge have come up with a solution: Flavor Strips. They put a little more kick into space-food; from simple salt-and-pepper to Asian spices, astronauts get to add more taste to their meals without the space traveler, as Myra Halpin, a chemistry and research instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics says of one tale told to her, 'spinning himself around to get the hot sauce out of the bottle.'"
Perfect! (Score:5, Funny)
If anyone else was curious... (Score:3, Informative)
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cool idea... (Score:3)
I don't know what NASA's current soln is (other than bland food/tube food), but any advancement in making space easier to inhabit is a great one.
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All of the "spices" are typically already in the food. Think space MRE. and they have their diets controlled so no going off the nut over salting anything.
AS for "hot sauce" you can easily have a hot pepper paste in a tube to apply or eat a small amount and then eat the food. In fact I believe they already have it on the ISS.
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Those days are long gone. These days it's pouches like MREs, except the food selection is limited - it's difficult to pour or put stuff on food so post-spicing is practically impossible - the best they can manage is rehydrating and heating. Dry powders have a habit of going everywhere and clogging things up. Wet spices just ball up and spashes turn into smaller bal
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The problem is, those problems are already solved. Liquid spices are in squeeze bottles designed to only let out small drops, and the astronauts trained to use them only close to the food so they don't float about. The quantity carried is small enough that density isn't a big issue. Dry spices are basically not used at all. Hot sauce (a liquid spice) is used in place of pepper, and
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The way they handle salt/pepper is that they dissolve the salt and pepper in water, and give the astronauts little bottles of that. Seasons the food in a way that doesn't have lots of little particles floating around.
blotter acid (Score:2)
blotter acid is "prior art". Hope they're not planning on patenting it for profit.
This could lead to hilarious practical jokes on the station... yo, could you pass me a teriyaki flavor strip? Hmm... this teriyaki flavor strip has a grateful dead album cover on it ... WTF ...
Aside from drug humor, I think it would be hilarious to print up dozens of "hot pepper strips" on the station laser jet, and feed them to the victim thinking he's lost his sense of taste, then once he's gulping the things down by the d
Good thing this wasn't in Japan (Score:2)
If I'd seen "High School Juniors Create Flavor Strips for Astronauts" in a Japanese news site, I'd have just known panties were involved.
I always wondered why..... (Score:3)
The space program did not use things like Fruit leathers and food leathers. It's been known to backpackers and camping people for centuries.
a little flavorless gelatin and the "spices" spread out and let dry. it turns into a leather that you can pack easily and use without effort.
What is this? I don't even (Score:2)
"astronauts get to add more taste to their meals without the space traveler"
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Really?
Assuming you understand how the comma works, it says:
That's far from the most brok
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"astronauts get to add more taste to their meals without the space traveler"
Well, clearly using the space traveler is the traditional way of adding more taste to astronautical meals.
On one hand, it seems slightly irresponsible to eat space travelers, even well preserved ones.
On the other hand, he's not human, and we have great tradition for eating other species.
On the gripping hand, he probably belongs to the meat caste.
Great Business opportunity (Score:2)
I'm spinning myself around (Score:2)
They put a little more kick into space-food; from simple salt-and-pepper to Asian spices, astronauts get to add more taste to their meals without the space traveler, as Myra Halpin, a chemistry and research instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics says of one tale told to her, 'spinning himself around to get the hot sauce out of the bottle.'"
trying to get my head around this terrible sentence
Would you like another lick of my Flavor Strip? (Score:2)