[X] My Assistant

[karolp]

The menus in the Apollo program are rather well known, as I do recall 73 postitions (or was it Gemini?). However, I was wondering whether anything has actually been eaten by the astronauts ON the Moon and when (with regard to time of mission or time from waking up - I assume humans have slept on the Moon as well).

Also, I was wondering what the Russian space menus are (and were) and what would the Russian guy from LOK 1 eat if it did land on the Moon.

Finally, as other nations are considering manned missions to Moon (China, India?, Europe?) what could they eat? I kind of remember the pilot of Shenzhou eating rice in orbit...

[dvandorn]

I'm not positive how the NASA dieticians made slices of bread "zero-G friendly." Perhaps they came up with a type of bread that doesn't get very crumbly. But by the time of the Apollo flights, there were not only pre-packaged meal packs, there was also a pantry of food stuffs the crew could raid any time they liked for snacks and meal items not included in their planned meals.

For example, there is a fairly well-known demonstration of the make-yourself-a-sandwich fixings during the first TV broadcast from Apollo 11 during transearth coast. Buzz Aldrin pulled out a pack of bread (two slices wrapped in a bag) and a tin of ham spread. He took out a slice of bread, opened the tin of ham spread, and used his spoon (the only eating utensil they actually had) to spread a big glop of ham spread on the bread. Of course, unlike how we would do things here on Earth, Aldrin then set the partially-full can of ham spread spinning in mid-air and watched as its uneven mass distribution caused it to deviate from a smooth spin...

-the other Doug