What Astronauts Eat

What Astronauts Eat

Nutrition is an integral part of human life, which should always be provided even in unusual situations, such as during a space flight.

Food for astronauts

How and what do astronauts eat? In the view of many people, the meal of an astronaut takes place by eating mashed food from special tubes. Indeed, in the 1960s, this is roughly how it went.

How it all started

The issue of food in space was faced by the scientific community long before the famous first flight. Initially, scientists planned to invent special pills that would be nutritious and quench a person's caloric needs.

The pills were never created, instead they began to use the very tubes that are actually called tubes.

The first tubes were made of aluminum, today they are made of multi-layer laminate and coextrusion. The ration of the first cosmonauts was not diverse - it was quite poor and consisted of fresh liquids and pastes. As a result, there appeared disposable meal sets consisting of three meals, each of which was packed in a separate tube.

The cosmonaut was supposed to eat the contents of such a tube immediately after opening it. The best meals were selected by the astronauts themselves still on Earth, the menu was basically calculated for 8 days, then it was repeated in a circle.

Meat tubes for astronauts

For the first time in space, astronaut German Titov managed to eat. His flight lasted 25 hours, which at the time was a huge achievement. The menu included three dishes - vegetable soup puree, liver pate and black currant juice. The cosmonaut ate three meals, but remained hungry. Then the menu was expanded, the dishes became more varied and nutritious.