Four Month Mars Food Study Wraps Up 142
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.
Did they try this? (Score:5, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Did they try this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did they try this? (Score:5, Funny)
I lived with a Frenchman for a while and I was making French toast for breakfast once and I asked him what they call it in France. He told me he'd never heard or seen this food before. I asked him why it was called French toast then, and with dead seriousness he replied, "Probably to make it sound better."
Re:Did they try this? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, in France they call it [i]pain perdu[/i] "lost bread", possibly because it's a good use for bread that's gone stale.
Re: (Score:2)
and in the dutch part of belgium, it's called either "verloren brood" (lost bread) or "gewonnen brood" (won bread: because it is not lost ...)
Re: (Score:2)
dead seriousness he replied, "Probably to make it sound better."
*Snerk*. Same deal with 'french fries' I guess. I've never known French people to be big on deep frying.
*Most* 'Foreign' cuisine in the USA has been modified from it's native version to a sufficient extent to really be considered a different dish. Some of this is due to availability of ingredients, especially for Chinese dishes, but a lot of it is to make it more palatable to american taste buds.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
dead seriousness he replied, "Probably to make it sound better."
*Snerk*. Same deal with 'french fries' I guess. I've never known French people to be big on deep frying.
*Most* 'Foreign' cuisine in the USA has been modified from it's native version to a sufficient extent to really be considered a different dish. Some of this is due to availability of ingredients, especially for Chinese dishes, but a lot of it is to make it more palatable to american taste buds.
Nope "french" (really, it's "frenched") is the style of the cut of the potato. Thin cut. Has nothing to do with France which makes Freedom Fries even sillier.
Re:Did they try this? (Score:5, Informative)
I grew up in New Orleans where "French Bread" is a staple. I recall many years ago asking my mother why they call the meal French toast. She relayed what her grandmother told her years before -- that the French dish "lost bread" uses dipped, stale bread to salvage what would otherwise be wasted food. A fresh loaf of common bread will fall apart when you pull it out of the milk and eggs. However, New Orleans "French Bread" as a firm crust yet porous, sponge-like interior to both soak up the mix while hold together.
Re: (Score:2)
and in dutch-speaking belgium(and holland too probably) 'Frans brood' (literally 'French bread') is used for baguettes ...
Re: (Score:2)
And in Swedish it's called "fattig riddare" which means "poor knight" like in German as I learned today: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4089849&cid=44566217 [slashdot.org]. At least that word is a bit more understandable..
Re: (Score:2)
Observation: Nothing I've found in Belgium really classifies as "bread", except for a few imported options :)
Re: (Score:2)
... However, New Orleans "French Bread" as a firm crust yet porous, sponge-like interior to both soak up the mix while hold together.
Using slightly stale bread, such as sliced and left out on the countertop overnight, is a good way to achieve the firm outside and soft inside.
Re: (Score:2)
... However, New Orleans "French Bread" as a firm crust yet porous, sponge-like interior to both soak up the mix while hold together.
Using slightly stale bread, such as sliced and left out on the countertop overnight, is a good way to achieve the firm outside and soft inside.
Oops I confused french bread and french toast. Presumably there is more than one type of bread in France.
Re: (Score:2)
I lived with a Frenchman for a while and I was making French toast for breakfast once and I asked him what they call it in France. He told me he'd never heard or seen this food before. I asked him why it was called French toast then, and with dead seriousness he replied, "Probably to make it sound better."
Interestingly enough, to go along with the article mentioning tortillas, "French Tortillas" cooked the same way as French Bread are quite good too. Four tortillas are a bit better than corn when used this way. I was quite pleased to discover it worked well.
Bread is not used fast enough in my household so flour tortillas are often a substitute. Tortillas last much longer than a loaf of bread does when stored on a kitchen counter.
Re: (Score:2)
You can put both tortillas and bread in the refrigerator to make them last even longer. I think many people even freeze bread, and IIRC, you can still toast the frozen bread into proper toast.
Re: (Score:2)
I lived with a Frenchman for a while and I was making French toast for breakfast once and I asked him what they call it in France. He told me he'd never heard or seen this food before. I asked him why it was called French toast then, and with dead seriousness he replied, "Probably to make it sound better."
This is a French recipe as I've been told by a French friend, used to reclaim old bread. However, typically, when American cuisine has "French" in the title (such as "french fires") it is because it is cooked in the "French style" which is to say fried in fat. At least, that is what I found out after a session of doing web searches as to wondering why "French fires" are called that instead of "Belgian Fries" as I see in Europe.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
In Canada, they actually try to pass it off as an "Energy Bar". Those words are actually in small print under the logo.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're a bit confused, it's a new energy bar that totally looks like a Mars bar.
Re: (Score:2)
This was my first thought when I saw the headline. The marketing works!
Re: (Score:2)
Yup... (Score:5, Funny)
Velveeta cheese
That should quickly solve the overpopulation issue inherent to the one-way nature of the trip but will complicate logistics by requiring far greater amounts of toilet paper...
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a food lineup (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
It reduces the amount of methane that has to brought on board.
The previously tried to bring a cow on Fobos-Grunt but it never made it. The flatulent fuckers are less than wieldy when in a confined space.
Re: (Score:2)
Banned alternative - surstromming (Score:2, Offtopic)
Banned alternative - surstromming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu6_Pi_a1lI [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgV2imaOCao [youtube.com]
Or should that be canned alternative?
Fucking Great. How much did this cost? (Score:1, Insightful)
NASA for the fail. Again.
Re:Fucking Great. How much did this cost? (Score:5, Funny)
You normally go camping for four months at a time, and do all your shopping before you leave, smartass?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes I do... we also consider the two donkeys carrying all the supplies when we start out as a part of the meal plan so we dont waste space.
Re: (Score:3)
we also consider the two donkeys carrying all the supplies when we start out as a part of the meal plan so we dont waste space.
You could do that with half the astronauts! Hell, there's no shortage of volunteers for a one-way trip [washingtonpost.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Appalachian Trail hikers often do. People pre-buy all their food and have it shipped to them. And it takes a minimum of 4 months for the trip.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I feel like a smartass. Anyway, my point is that it's not necessarily obvious what you'd want to take to have a nutritious yet varied diet while minimising load.
Re: (Score:1)
You normally go camping for four months at a time, and do all your shopping before you leave, smartass?
My grandmother spends every winter in an old log cabin in the mountains. She stocks up on food in the fall because it's not reachable except by snowshoe for about 4 or 5 months, and she can't walk that far even in good weather.
But the situations are a bit different- she doesn't have a weight limit and has access to as much water and air as she needs. She's not locked in a hermetically sealed unit, and doesn't have to worry about what to do with the trash or bodily waste either.
I think the biggest thing to t
Re: (Score:3)
Tortillas aren't used because they keep well. They're used because they don't generate crumbs. That's why they don't use bread - the crumbs would fly everywhere and get into everything, which is not only an irritant (a crumb could fly into an eye), but also dangerous if it plugged a sensor onboard.
Living in sp
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
They should have gone to the poles, as that's a much more similar environment.
Recipe contest winners (Score:2)
The second place winner in main dishes deserves praise, I think.
http://hi-seas.org/?p=2204 [hi-seas.org]
Borscht? (Score:3, Funny)
Some success meals were Russian borscht ...
Even Russian robots don't eat borscht. They do better on electricity from solar cells. The engines may require a different diet.
Hold it, you were thinking of sending ugly bags of mostly water? Why? What is this, the Rube Goldberg Mars Exploration contest?
Never send a man to do a robot's job.
Re:Borscht? (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The ability to make instant decisions and execute them on the spot is a good start. The robots have to be pre-programmed and try to function semi-autonomously due to the time lag. Even if we put humans just in orbit around Mars so they can remotely control ground-based robotic vehicles, much more would get done much faster.
Re: (Score:2)
First, except to keep the robot from falling off a cliff, there is no need for anything or anyone to make instant decisions, and those sorts of instant decisions are already largely made by the robots (a person in orbit probably wouldn't help much).
Second, for a fraction of the price of figuring out how to send wetware to Mars (I suppose a mission requirement will be that it arrive alive) we could vastly improve our robotics. That would also be useful for exploring the outer solar system.
I don't like being
Re: (Score:2)
Telescopes are pretty bad at analyzing soil samples and a whole bunch of other things. The purpose of exploring Mars is scientific discovery, which robots can do cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
So? Send a whole fleet of rovers and have them work in parallel. Design new and improved rovers. It'll still be a lot cheaper than sending people.
Bear Grylls (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bear Grylls (Score:4, Funny)
Or make for really awesome ratings when he doesn't.
Fox would be all over that.
Re:Bear Grylls (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, that's what my wife calls roughing it too ... but we're not saying we're survival experts.
And, really, they *do* need to keep him alive during filming, so I'm not exactly surprised that what is shown on screen doesn't 100% reflect what actually happened or that some of it is carefully staged. The little I've seen of that, he's doing some really dangerous things, and the insurance companies aren't going to let you kill off your principal.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Bear Grylls's shows are staged. Les Stroud's [lesstroud.ca] shows are not.
Re: (Score:3)
There aren't any hotels on Mars.
Re: (Score:3)
He cant survive on Earth without a support team. Ask the real survivalist that does "survivorman" what he thinks of good ol; Bear.
Re: (Score:2)
Les Stroud is my hero.
Re: (Score:2)
Les Stroud fo' liife!
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for Bear, in space he won't have any 5 star hotels to hide out in between video coms back to NASA.
Take me (Score:2)
I have no problem eating the same thing for every meal. Just get me a three year supply of Mountain House freeze dried Pasta Primavera and I'd be set.
Re: (Score:2)
Dominos Pizza (Score:3, Funny)
20 minute delivery or its free.
To Serve Man (Score:5, Funny)
Do you know.. (Score:5, Funny)
Jules: Do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese on Mars?
Brett: No.
Jules: It's still called a quarter pounder with cheese because Mars was colonized by America and you know we had to have that shit our way.
Vincent: Also, a quarter pound burger is as big as your head but just don't ask where the meat comes from.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, Buggalo is very tasty when cooked and processed properly.
Actual Mars Menu (Score:5, Funny)
Day 1. Algae slurry.
Day 2. Algae slurry.
...
...
Day N. Algae slurry.
Day N+1 Algae slurry.
Re: (Score:2)
Day N^2. Redshirts.
Well, it's a nice thought (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's nice that people come along and try to drum up interest in space with these pseudo-experiments, but this is not really very practical. If we were to send people to Mars it would be for a very, very, very long stay. Think years, if not forever. While the first humans on Mars would surely bring with them a few months of food to get started, they would have to consider themselves on their own past that. In terms of weight, it would only be practical to send as little as possible with them. Re-supply missions would be so costly, they would likely be far and few between and would concentrate on water and replacement equipment - things do break down. Also, what if something went wrong and a food re-supply mission that said Martians would be depending on did not make it? At least water can (and would), be recycled and stretched out. It's well established that a long-term manned Mars mission would have to be largely self-sustainable - in other words: luxuries such as cheese and fish would be out of the question. A more practical experiment would involve establishing how and what foods future Martians would be able to cultivate on their own, as boring a diet as it might be, as well as pushing water recycling to new levels of efficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars [wikipedia.org]
I don't think they'd be taking much water with them; Mars doesn't have as much water as Earth, but it's still got more than enough (all over the planet) to support a sizable population. A bonus is that it's all in solid form, so it's easy to transport. It's also likely already sterile, and might even be pure for the most part. They'd do better to concentrate on using the available resources (what minerals are available at ground level?) and only bring the things
Re: (Score:2)
Let's face it. If you send people to Mars and their equipment breaks, they die. Send along a pack of cyanide pills so they don't have to starve to death or die of dehydration.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious as to why you don't think fish would be viable. Awhile back I was very interested in Aquaponics, a combination of Hydroponics and Aquaculture, and it strikes me as a very good method for growing food both vegetable and meat. The systems I looked at took up relatively little space and were pretty self contained, the only real inputs being fish food. And you could grow duckweed for the fish food.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the risks of relying on your own grown food is significant should it all fail. That is something we could test in LEO first though, and I would suggest testing all such methods that way whether it is fish or insects or just plain plants. All of those methods share a lot of the same risks.
The reason I like fish though is that they form a more symbiotic relationship with the plants in a hydraponic situation. You feed the fish vegetable matter that you don't want to eat, the fish grow into meat an
Why is it that these experiments remind me of. (Score:2)
Biodome? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EWikCCfHJw [youtube.com]
And not really useful.... (Score:2)
Honestly the cost of every ounce of weight to get it to mars and they had meat? Why? Protien powders and mash are a far better idea. The fact that Sausage, even when heavily cured does NOT have a very good shelf life is suspect. 4 month mission to mars, the FOOD needs to be packaged and ready 3 months before launch. so ALL The food in order to meat mission specification really need to be able to withstand a 12-18 month shelf life in case of a launch delay.
This "study" is bogus as hell if they had f
Re: (Score:1)
The veggies were freeze-dried, not frozen. That significantly reduces their weight.
Dunno about the meat.
Re: (Score:2)
Mars mission will have advanced MRE's.....that have a wider range of flavors
I think there is a reason why hot sauce is pretty much as a standard included in every MRE. And if you are leaving Earth for what is pretty much a one-way trip, psychologically it makes sense to include meat with the meals, for a morale boost if nothing else. When you are going somewhere to die, do you really want your last meal to be protein powder?
Re: (Score:2)
The food in order to meat mission specificatio
I see what you did there.
Re: (Score:2)
Refrigeration probably isn't all that expensive weight wise, hell they just need to insulate the container from the internal environment and keep it out of the sun.
For most MRE's hot water isn't even necessary, it's just a nicety because people like hot meals for whatever reason.
Am I the only one (Score:2)
Reduced Gravity (Score:1)
Anyone know how reduced gravity affects quantity of food eaten? They can't simulate that here but wondering how much less food you would need if you weren't working as hard against gravity.
Re: (Score:2)
Flatulance (Score:2)
Seems that if you're going to be in an enclosed space with other people for an extended time, you want foods that produce little/no "natural gas", because, of course *your* farts don't stink, but that other guy's....
Zero G kills sense of taste (Score:2)
Astronauts have told me that foods have much less taste in space due to fluids increasing in your head. Therefore they like to put lots of hot sauce on things. One worry of course was that a drop of hot sauce would float away and get inhaled. They do particularly like sweets. Thus taste testing on Earth is not too relevant to space.
Re: (Score:2)
I was pretty sure it had something to do with the reduced air pressure also. It's the same issue that they have on airplanes with inflight meals always tasting bland. The lower air pressure reduces the effectiveness of taste buds somehow. And the low humidity affects your sense of smell, which is where a lot of perceived flavor actually comes from.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just air pressure, I wonder if the lack of 'hot air rising' has something to do with it too. You won't have the hot air with food aroma rising into your nose.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know if this is a regional thing or what but I absolutely devour beans, cheese and the like and don't seem to encounter the sort of apocalyptic digestive consequences that I see cited on where whenever someone brings up sturdy food.
What causes some people to have such weaponised digestive tracts?
Re:Fabada in a spaceship... (Score:5, Informative)
There are pretty substantial variations in intestinal normal flora between individuals (non-human cells in your body outnumber the human ones about 10-1, and many of them live in the gut), so that would be my guess. I'm not nearly enough microbiologist to suggest which organisms or strains are involved; but gut bacteria are a significant variable (since they vary based on where you were first innoculated with them, internal competition between organisms, antibiotics you've taken, etc.) that changes markedly faster than any human genetic or epigenetic component does.
Re: (Score:1)
Gut Flora.
In the case of cheese only ~50% of the adult human population can properly handle lactose as that is a relatively recent evolution. It is basically the same reason for beans, but oligosaccharide rather than lactose. When the gut flora breaks down the sugars gas is produced.
The amount of gas produced is very much controlled by bacterial in the gut, and that is fairly unique to each person. How the beans are cooked can also significantly change their effect on people.
Re:Fabada in a spaceship... (Score:5, Interesting)
Gut flora.
Basically the gas from beans is produced by bacteria breaking down oligosaccharides that your digestive system can't break down as easily. You may have different bacteria or a smaller amount of the same bacteria than someone who is more gassy.
Re:Fabada in a spaceship... (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
As well as a failure to appropriately soak/process the beans.
Re: (Score:2)
You can slowcook them just fine, but when you do an overnight soak and rinse prior to cooking is mandatory or you will have a fun time.
Re: (Score:3)
Me: "What can I do about having really bad gas all the time?"
Doctor: "Fart more. It won't hurt you."
I walk in the door, let one rip and state "Doctor's orders!"
Also, along with gut flora I think it has somet
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If you want to see something fun, Have someone eat RAW kidney beans or kidney beans not boiled but slowly soaked and cooked under very low heat.
They will turn into a Puke and poo sprinkler as it violently comes out pretty much every hole all at once. Most beans require cooking above a certain temperature and time to make them safe to eat.
Re: (Score:3)
Just for the record, that's due to a protein rather than a carbohydrate, and the problem is not indigestibility but rather that the protein is actively toxic [wikipedia.org].
Re:Fabada in a spaceship... (Score:4, Funny)
While it may taste great, fabada asturiana is very famous for its farting production capacity (as most meals that contain beans). Now imagine that in a spaceship... yep, recipe for disaster!
Or a nifty way to top up the fuel tank :)
Re: (Score:1)
It would probably start with putting the more than generous food stamps (Bridge card, whatever, don't know if that's only a Michigan thing) these people get to better use than Papa Murphy's pizza.
The thing that would really cook would be making contraception available to these people and giving out food stamps/Bridge cards/whatever to people who DON'T have children, so there's no survival incentive to make babies they can't afford in the first place to get government assistance so they can afford to live.
Qu
Parts of the US tried that. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The thing that would really cook would be making contraception available to these people
A very significant proportion of the world's population - and a significant proportion of that in poor/developing countries - willingly (apparently) submits to religious beliefs that prohibit contraception.
Reliable contraception is cheap and could be ubiquitous. Human nature/politics/religion are not easy to change. Those are the real problems.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's not got much spam in it.