SPACE MEALS

Underpants!

So I hear there's talk of de-orbiting the ISS in 2016.  This could totally kill my idea to use any extra room on-board the Station to house a small, automated McDonalds outlet!  

Actually I never had that in mind.  But the whole ISS de-orbiting thing has made made me a bit pensive on the subject of humans in space.

Namely I ask:  why do our nationally -- and in the case of the ISS, "internationally" -- backed manned space flight projects always make you feel like a 3 year old dude who gets underpants for a birthday his parents sold as a Toys R Us extravaganza?  

I'd even say the same about the Apollo program:  that was like a 3 year old dude getting underpants for his birthday, too; it's just that the party was at 6 Flags.

I don't know, but I figure maybe the money and plans will emerge to keep the ISS in a safe orbit.  Then like some effort to "recycle" an old U.S. public school building, the ISS will see half of itself sold for private use and the other half demolished (better termed as "de-orbited").

Of course, I am also a firm and reasonable believer in speculation regarding a "shadow" space program maintained by the U.S.  

So, perhaps 2015 will roll around and we will, instead, watch as yet unseen Air Force-developed space vehicles regularly dock with the ISS, thereby potentially giving the structure a much higher on-going occupancy level and a new nationally-backed lease on life.  

 

Not Keen About Farming on Mars or the Moon

Hey, we just landed on Mars and I sure am ready to grow some wheat and soybeans!!  

Actually, I am kidding on that one, sorry NASA.

Farming of any sort would be the absolute last thing I'd want to be doing if I landed on Mars, the Moon or any other body in the solar system.  Also farming would be the last thing I'd want to watch astronauts on Mars, the Moon or any other body in the Solar System do from here on Earth (if NASA or private organizations planning such inter-planetary trips and human outposts are seeking to maintain any kind of Earth-based audience for these efforts, then they should take note).  

I can almost guarantee you that NASA astronauts, Russian Cosmonauts, Chinese Takonauts and private space visitors would say the same thing (But the astronauts and their like don't want to speak up about it lest they rub somebody in charge the wrong way and lose their place in the schedule) 

So what is my "work-around" when it comes to feeding astronauts on missions that

extend for say, two years?

Well, let's look at how I, an average joe of 6'1" and 170lbs eats day-to-day down here on Earth.  I frankly subsist quite happily on the following:  Met-Rx bars, Cliff bars, peanut-butter-on-tortilla sandwhiches, filtered water, coffee, and dried fruit. 

Yes I am definitely more "eat-to-live, than "live-to-eat."  But the thing is, I've been eating like that for probably the last 15 years!! And it doesn't really bother me.  My health is good according to my physicians and I am quite physically active. 

So let's say I am going to Mars for a two year round trip.  I'll need approximately 3 meals a day x 730 days. Ok so around a total of 2200 meals at say 700-800 calories a piece for a total of 2100-2400 calories a day.  Let's be on the safe-side and bring 3000 meals and lets bump the total available calories per day to 3000-3500, since I'll presumably be a busy astronaut down there on the red planet.

Yes, we'd have to launch quite a few food bars, jars of peanut butter and flat bread, coffee grounds, raisins and so forth to cover my nutritional needs and those of other astronauts.  But you know, that would beat the heck out of rolling the dice and suiting up to farm soybeans in some inflatable contraption on "Eagle crater."  And I doubt it would be any more or less expensive to do.

So, I have to say that I am not too keen on the idea of farming on Mars or the Moon, at least not in the initial years of human ventures to those planets.