Spacemeals.com is a new site, so I'd like to kick things off by mentioning a few specifics about its approach to the topic of "space meals:"
1) Spacemeals.com is certainly predisposed to focus on the food and drink consumed by U.S. Astronauts. After all, this site is produced out of Los Angeles, Ca. USA -- So U.S. Astronauts represent my "home-team-in-space," so to speak.
But spacemeals.com certainly doesn't want to focus on what's on our Astronaut's menus at the expense of the menus of European Astronauts, Russian "Cosmonauts," Chinese "Taikonauts," private Space Tourists and a potentially growing number of nationally-backed space-farers from around the world. That'd be a disservice to our thoughtful readers.
So, if you -- regardless of your national origin -- find yourself in outer-space, spacemeals.com is going to dig up whatever information is out there about what you eat (If you are a foreign space agency or a space tourist, don't be shy about letting us know what's on your respective space menus. Hey, we'll even take "disinformation" on the subject as long as its from established organizations and individuals like yourselves ;)
2) Anybody with access to a web search engine and who takes the time to search keywords such as "Space Food" or "Space Meals" and then read a few of the resulting pages is -- in pretty short order -- going to have a fair understanding of how the types of foods consumed in space have changed over the last 50 years.
The 60s space menus are long gone. You no longer suck on tubes of Apple sauce or Borscht (Russian) while (Western) mission-control-types in black ties and short sleeved dress shirts tap their fingers nervously, hoping you can hold it down.
These days space-farers consume meals composed of foods and drinks one might normally have for breakfast, lunch or dinner down here on Earth in most industrialized nations. Said space-farers even occasionally have meals in orbit that are prepared on earth by famous chefs such as Emeril Lagase, Rachel Ray, or German chef, Harald Wohlfahrt and French chef Alain Ducasse.
Nevertheless, a list of environmentally-induced problems has emerged over the last 50 years that tend to dictate meal choices for space-farers. Spacemeals.com will certainly discuss this "list" and perhaps readers we'll use it as a guideline to suggest their own ideas for future space meals.
3) Spacemeals.com will do its best to "corral" all the latest news and information related to space meals and individual space food and drink items within a section on this site. We'll also certainly display a list of sites we regularly read on the topic of outer space.
4) Somebody on the ground has to eat, drink and review all the space-type food and drink hat you can buy on line! Wherever it can, Spacemeals.com will certainly make an effort to test and review any of the space meals sold over the counter by various on line retailers. I'll attempt to enjoy them -- or, egad, puke them up -- first, so you don't run in to any surprises if you are buying food items for space enthusiasts young and old.
5) When it comes to what to eat in space, you have a few bright minded food scientists with the space agencies and the companies who they contract with that are responsible for doing all the "heavy lifting" on the subject of menu planning for space flight.
Certainly, over the years, these scientists have received valuable feed-back from space-farers themselves. But the food scientists, whether in the public or private sector, are probably best described as perpetually "over-worked" preparing viable, updated space meal choices
Spacemeals.com and the intelligent general public will certainly attempt to get some more ideas out there for consideration. And those ideas will also include suggestions for how to address the nutritional needs of humans spending years on the Moon or two years or more on round-trip ventures to Mars and back.
Right now, spacemeals.com is admittedly not too keen on the idea of watching space-farers travel 6 months so they can then arrive on the surface of Mars and celebrate by breaking their backs setting up some kind of soybean-farm. Spacemeals.com thinks this idea needs a little work -- perhaps a series of small, closed "auto-farms" that are sent and fully established on Mars years ahead of the arrival of humans.
