SPACE FOOD with Maggie Coblentz

Smologies with Alie Ward

Host Alie Ward interviews Maggie Coblentz, an astrobromatologist, to explore the fascinating science of eating in orbit. The episode covers

Key takeaways

• Water on the International Space Station is recycled from human urine and perspiration with high efficiency.
• The cost to ship water to orbit is approximately $83,000 per gallon.
• Tortillas are a preferred food in zero gravity because they do not create dangerous crumbs like bread does.
• The Nucleus system is a suitcase-sized garden designed to grow plants like kale and cabbage in space.
• Future Mars missions may be entirely vegetarian because meat and dairy are too difficult to preserve for long durations.

Main topics

• Astrobromatology
• Water reclamation on the ISS
• Deep Space Food Program winners

Notable quotes

The price to ship water up there is roughly $83,000 per gallon.

Conclusion

A delightful deep dive into the intersection of culinary needs and aer

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Oh hey, it's the lady with her overcoat sticking out of the car door, Allie Speaker 3 (0:03) Ward. Oh hey, here we are. We're at Smologies. What are Smologies? Well, I'm glad you asked. These are shorter, classroom-safe, or kid-friendly, G-rated episodes we've cut down so that they're smaller and they're good for Smologites as well. This one is going to take you to another planet, or at least into orbit. And I hope you're hungry to learn a lot about space food. loved this Speaker 2 (0:27) one and it definitely made me appreciate my lunch here on earth. Let's go. Okay. Speaker 3 (0:32) On to astrobromatology. Astro means celestial body or star in ancient Greek and broma in Greek means food. So of course, space food. Thisologist is an artist and designer turned scientist. They have researched space food at MIT. They worked in the science division at the Nat Geo Society. They've sent miso. to ferment on the International Space Station. They've studied solar ovens in Norway, looked at bread making in space, and attended the UN's meeting of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. We'll talk about powdered meats, espresso in zero-g, eating without gravity, recycled astronaut pee, and sweat on the ISS, canned stews, stinky roommates. Velcro fatigue, what happens if you get diarrhea in space, and the future of food with artist, researcher, space food expert, and thus astro-bromatologist, Maggie Koblenz. Speaker 2 (1:44) Maggie Speaker 3 (1:44) Koblenz, she, her. I talked to so many people, Maggie. I asked them about their jobs and you have one of the weirdest. It's so cool. It's so like space Speaker 2 (1:56) food. Speaker 3 (1:57) Like who does that? And the answer is Maggie. That's nuts. Now you also, you have a background in art and design too. Speaker 2 (2:07) How did this all kind of come about? I was approaching it. very much with the designers or industrial designers lens and looking at how do people live in space? I thought that was such a weird question and really stretched my imagination. So as a designer and artist, someone who loves to make things, this entire process changes in zero G. So with food, it's fluid dynamics. Do you need to be strapped to the wall while you eat or while you conduct your work? This was my entry point as a designer. There must be so much Velcro, right? There's a lot of Velcro. Everything's strapped down. But one of my favorite stories about the ISS, it actually didn't even include a dining table at first. So it was just thought that these humans, almost treated like robots, were just going to go up there, float around, Velcro their food to the walls, strap themselves to the walls while they ate. And of course, naturally, human beings want to gather. They want to have a place to come together and enjoy this very limited break in their day. And so it... One day, an astronaut just found some scrap piece of material and strapped it to the wall to make a table, which really has no practical use in space. As you say, you need Velcro. You can't just have something sitting on a table. But still, it was this human nature to have some kind of design intervention for a meal and for socializing with their fellow crewmates. Speaker 1 (3:32) As you can see, this is an open concept. Speaker 3 (3:36) When you sort of started this and you started blogging, okay, like how are they eating? What are they eating now? What was the baseline? Speaker 2 (3:42) What were they eating? Speaker 3 (3:43) The Speaker 2 (3:43) history of space food is so fascinating. So originally it was canned, which is extremely heavy and not the most practical, although it is a mode of preserving food. But this is heavy and costly to actually get to space. So at some point we're creating freeze-dried foods. So this is just a dried food like Tang, but it's not always. powdered form. It usually looks more like a sponge. I actually have some sitting in front of me right now. So it's a burger patty that's been snapped in half and packed into this plastic wrap with all of the liquid removed from it. So it weighs practically nothing. And it tells you how much water to add. So there's a little spout on the top of the package and they would attach it to something called the rehydration station, which is on the International Space Station. It's something almost like... 90 or 99 % of the water that's used is recycled from human urine, human perspiration. And then that gets processed and you put that back into your food as a warm or hot water and then let it sit and cut the package open with scissors and eat it directly from the bag. So a lot of these foods are modeled after MREs, which are military rations. So quick background, given the Speaker 3 (4:59) astronomical shipping costs. to destination orbit. The price to ship water up there is roughly $83,000 per gallon. So you got to recycle, folks. The International Space Station's WPA, or Water Processor Assembly, involves harvesting water vapor, and then that's in conjunction with a UPA, which is short for Urine Processor Assembly. Don't you dare retch. Don't do it. I hate to break it to you. Where do you think your water comes from? A huge sparklets barrel in heaven? No, dude, your Nalgene is filled with liquid that used to be frog snot and cruise ship toilets and elephant tears. So according also to a 2023space.com article titled, NASA just recycled 98 % of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS and engineers are thrilled. The end result. of this water reclamation is far superior to what municipal water systems produce on the ground. So yeah, if you drink a glass of earthling tap water with your MRE or meal ready to eat, it is technically grosser than what they eat miles above the planet. They're like, it's war chow. Exactly. Get Speaker 2 (6:20) used Speaker 3 (6:20) to it, Speaker 2 (6:21) right? Exactly. But today it's different. There's, I think, Lavazza. sent up an espresso machine because the coffee is, again, just powdered like an instant coffee. You add water. And then now they have the Deep Space Food Program at NASA, at least, to start to think about what is food for Mars and what are the challenges associated with preparing those foods? How will different space environment conditions impact the food? Will it degrade? Will the color, texture, nutrition value change