Hydrated Food Should Be Used on Long Space Mission

Date

2018-07-08

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

48th International Conference on Environmental Systems

Abstract

In early space missions it was assumed that future astronauts would consume concentrated bite-sized cubes and rehydrated freeze-dried foods to minimize the mass of food that was launched. Such extreme space-designed foods were used but were found unsatisfactory, so more familiar food was substituted. Until recently, it was often assumed that long duration space missions would use dehydrated food and recycled water to save mass. Familiar normally hydrated food could provide higher quality and better nutrition, but would require a significantly higher launch mass. Designing a food system for space must trade-off nutrition, cost, and safety as well as familiarity and acceptability. In the past, the key variable in space food system design has been the food moisture content. Normal food is typically two-thirds water. Dehydrated food can eliminate most of the water mass but has much lower acceptability. The well planned food system for the International Space Station (ISS) balances acceptability and launch cost by using a mix of dehydrated, moisture reduced, and normal food. Now that commercial rocket systems have reduced the cost of launch to a small fraction of the shuttle cost, there is much less need to use dehydrated food to reduce food launch mass. Normally hydrated food should now be used on long space missions.

Description

Harry Jones, NASA
ICES303: Physio-Chemical Life Support- Water Recovery & Management Systems- Technology and Process Development
The 48th International Conference on Environmental Systems was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA on 08 July 2018 through 12 July 2018.

Keywords

space food, hydrated food, dehydrated food

Citation