The Miso That Went to Space

Summary

Before a long mission, an astronaut undergoes medical exams and works with a nutritionist, choosing from a fixed set of meals. A few store-bought favorites can come along if they clear approval, though not, say, a case of blueberries. Once everyone is aboard, roles sort themselves out as in any shared house. Someone usually ends up tracking the food and making sure everyone’s getting what they need. Coblentz says it’s less about who signed up for what role and more about how small groups naturally divide labor when they’re living in close quarters for months at a time. “People are people.”As more countries reach orbit, the menu has widened. The European Space Agency and the cosmonauts keep their own menus; astronauts barter and trade among themselves. NASA’s is the most tightly controlled system, a standardized set of about 200 items, developed, repackaged, and safety-tested in-house at its own food labs. JAXA’s menu impressed Coblentz most. The Japanese agency even put out a manga-style comic book about its space food, and its lineup ran livelier, with dishes created by outside universities, companies, and student groups—down to items like soy-glazed eel.The first Korean astronaut flew with kimchi engineered specially for the trip. Because kimchi is a live ferment, Korean scientists spent years and millions of dollars taming it for orbit. They irradiated it to kill the bacteria that give it its tang, cut its smell by up to half, and stabilized it so a sealed bag wouldn’t keep fermenting and burst near the spacecraft’s equipment. Coblentz notes that the significant amount spent to send kimchi into orbit reflects how much a government putting its national dish into orbit is a statement of cultural presence.Into the FieldSoylent, the meal-replacement drink that caught on in Silicon Valley around 2013, was an early entry point for Coblentz’s research. Its marketing stuck with her: ads of office workers too busy to eat, one of them “an astronaut sitting at a desk typing...