Nice fresh, hot Pizza in space. Should be a cinch right?
Let's say we're in orbit and we're hungry. We're not looking for Chicago-style Pizza up here. We'd settle for a couple of DiGiorno pies from the local Ralph's.
Just rocket 'em up on the next resupply ship and we'll throw them in the oven on the ISS. 25 minutes later we're all set...
This sounds good. In fact its an oft-expressed dream of astronauts to have a decent slice of pizza (or a cheese burger) while aboard the ISS or shuttles. But of course, *there are no ovens or grills up there and microwave contraptions and/or boiled water just don't bake a decent pie.
Not wanting to put the ISS through an expensive remodeling job involving marble counter-tops and Viking stoves, we at spacemeals.com say that the pizza-in-space dream whould be made a reality another way. Perhaps we should consider baking pizza (and grilling burgers) outside the ISS and the shuttles.
After all, when you are exposed to the sun up there in orbit you are apparently facing temperatures of 123 Degrees Celsius or about 250 Degrees Fahrenheit. 250F is, in fact, ideal for slow cooking as one might do with Barbecued Ribbs (Another idea! ...MMM...Space Ribs...)
In the case of pizza, we'll just design a small, sealed solar oven that protects food contents against solar radiation while --if necessary -- baking them at upwards of 400 degrees farhenheit using a relector apparatus. It shouldn't weight more than a couple of pounds at most and we can clean it out and use it on the next mission.
We load the tethered "oven" with a few pizza pies and release it to "drag" along-side the ISS/Shuttles, outside in the orbital sunlight for an hour or so -- the "orbital oven" (I like that name) will have remote thermometers and remote internal cameras so we know we aren't burning the crust. Then when the pizza's done, we reel it back in. Once we get it out of the air-lock, it's pizza time.
We are totally serious, do not laugh!
(*Correction: As of July 28th 2009, I learned that the ISS does in fact have an oven of sorts enough to accomodate a small 6 inch diameter pizza pie. An article called, "What Do Astronauts Eat in Space," by Claire Suddath and publishd in Time Magazine on July, 20 2009 mentioned this and that The Pizza Hut Corporation had made a go of delivering pan-style, 6 inch, designed-for-space "Pizzas" to the ISS aboard Russian built Proton rockets. I don't know if the fact that I missed this news in May, 2001 indicates a poor investment in "post" research on my part (it does) or that Pizza Hutt's space-pizza-delivery-campaign met with a rather muted public response (it might have); maybe everybody in the U.S. was still in shock that George W. Bush was somehow occupying the Oval Office at the time? ;] Anyway, grilling/baking in outer space using solar radiation while in Low Earth Orbit is another possible means to cook in space -- that concept, which I also floated in this post -- is something I will proudly stand by :P ).
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