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...

Yeah, they said it's not easy to use chopsticks there...

The very first thing eaten by a human being while on the lunar surface was a communion wafer, eaten by Buzz Aldrin during a communion ceremony he held for himself about two hours after the landing.

All of the astronauts who landed on the Moon ate at least a little something while they were on the surface. Meals were very similar to those in the CSM, but some of the items -- like the tomato bisque soup, the beef and potatoes, etc. -- that you rehydrated with hot water aboard the CSM were only able to mixed with cold water in the LM. (The LM couldn't afford the weight of a heater simply to heat water.) So they weren't all that great.

Now, these were meals taken inside the LM. On the last several flights (the J missions), there was also a fruit "jerky" snack placed inside the suit, attached to the neck ring, that a moonwalking astronaut could munch on while out walking on the surface. This went along with in-suit drink bags, which offered a quick drink of water or reconstituted fruit drink to a thirsty moonwalker. The drink bags had been provided in-suit since Apollo 13, although the Apollo 14 crew were the first to be able to use them while walking on the lunar surface.

-the other Doug

Thank you for such an extensive answer. I have also replayed the Polish podcast on my mp3 and it actually mentioned 72 positions in the menu and not on Gemini but on Skylab.

Now I only wonder what the solitary cosmonaut landing with the Russian LK lunar lander would chew on after touchdown. I believe this question may be answered by extrapolating the menus on Soyuz missions flown at the time. Or maybe even by accessing some documents that state the planned LK menu overtly. Unfortunately my access to recently unclassified Russian materials is rather limited.

Not food on the Moon, but drink - courtesy of Alan Stern:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12953794/

It seems that, not content with attacking an innocent comet, quietly wandering in the depths of space, mankind now intends to attack the Moon with, er, a comet...

Makesyerfink, dunnit?

Bob Shaw

Not really a comet but a chunk of ice nicely wrapped in a thermojacket. It says such chunks of water ice were already launched on Saturn 1, the so called "Project High Water". Any more info on the Saturn 1 shipments? Were they huge? What happened to them after orbital decay? What did that do to our atmosphere?

Karolp:

And what is a comet but a chunk of ice wrapped in a thermojacket od dusty grains? Or not, depending on who you're listening to!

Project High Water didn't dump ice into the upper atmosphere, but water which had been used as ballast during Saturn 1 sub-orbital test flights, and which froze into clouds of ice crystals. For details see: http://www.astronautix.com/sites/capllc34.htm

Bob Shaw

Alan Bean enjoyed the first spaghetti dinner on the Moon during Apollo 12.

http://utopia.utexas.edu/articles/alcalde/bean.html

http://www.venganza.org/

From all reports, Al Bean ate spaghetti *everywhere*. On his Skylab flight, he had spaghetti every fourth day, and he really wanted more. Mike Collins even mentions Al Bean's addiction to spaghetti in his book, "Carrying the Fire."

Even amongst all those down-home jet pilots, though, it fell to North Carolinian Charlie Duke to get the NASA dieticians to put freeze-dried grits on the Apollo menu. Apollo 16 was the first time the Apollo food packs included grits. (Not only did Duke enjoy the grits, he ended up eating most of John and Ken's, too... )

-the other Doug

A brief history of American space food pre-Space Shuttle era:

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/astro...od-history.html

http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/attm/nojs/food.1.html

Photos of space food:

http://www.jasonproject.org/expeditions/ja...space_food2.jpg

Food for Project MOL:

http://www.brooks.af.mil/History/space.html#lab

Russian bread from Mir:

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/da...um/e_nahrun.htm

AEROSPACE FOOD TECHNOLOGY

A Conference held at the University of South Florida

Tampa, Florida

April 15-17, 1969

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-202/sp202.htm

Thank you for your great answers. I have just come up with another issue regarding food on the Moon. Namely, you know... the final stage. Did they take the "excrements" with them as they departed or did they dispose them off on their way back to Earth (which point?) or did they... leave another, well, man-made object on the Moon exposing it to countless micrometeorite strikes? Any official info on that? Did we contaminate the Moon with human bio-material already?

Not quite on the Moon, but interesting nonetheless!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/science/...tml?ref=science

You guessed it -- they left their urine and feces on the Moon, in appropriate containers. They also left the leftovers of their meals, which also contain biomatter. (One comment Gene Cernan made, during a depressurization of his Lunar Module Challenger, was that he saw a piece of bread fly out the open hatch. IIRC, later on, he saw this piece of bread on the ground and thought it was a highly unusual rock. He even went so far as to bag it as a sample before Schmitt, who was chuckling mightily under his breath, told him not to bother...)

-the other Doug

The disposal containers for everything (Food, one and two) were inside of LM or they were put away on the Moon surface? All LM after the coupling with the CM, are left to drop into the Moon along with their disposals? I seems like that any disposal would NOT be left on the way from Moon to Earth. Otherwise they will be hitting on Earth

Rodolfo

They put the waste containers and used food containers into jettison bags and left the bags on the lunar surface. The final bags were tossed out the hatch in the final clean-out cabin depress.

-the other Doug

...You know, this might well be a significant problem for manned Mars exploration...hadn't considered it. Surely we can't leave bags o' unmentionable substances strewn around a landing site; looks like some kind of at least semi-closed biocycle is an inflexible prerequisite for a surface stay of any serious length under UN space exploration conventions!

I am reminded of the Arthur C. Clarke story about discovering life near the north pole of Venus...a native organism penetrated a waste container & thereby brought doom on its entire ecosystem... ...at the very least, we don't need to rediscover E.Coli under some Martian rock someday...

I think the "Simpsons" already solved that one: pocket composting

It's a shame they didn't recover it, assuming they could have learned something
about how the lunar surface environment interacted with organic material from
Earth?

Thinking back to Gemini 3 and its infamous ham sandwich, how did the Apollo
crew have one aboard the LM and not cause similar concerns about crumbs
getting into the electronics? They obviously didn't have the bread secured
in some way.

Nearly forty years later and I am still learning new things about the Apollo
missions.

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

Playing with your food in space, huh? The topic of food in space turns out to be simply amazing. But let us turn a bit towards the Russian side of it. I recall Matt on Planetary Radio making fun of early cosmonaut meals As far as I can tell Russian food is quite good. So what did they eat, especially on the early flights? Did Gagarin really eat anything and if so, what was it?

What about some Chinese food on the Lunar Surface ?


( Lunanaut 1 to base: I'll have number 126 with french fries instead of rice )