Food. | Life Support Workgroup | Forum

maciejm said:

I have completed a proposal to a food part of life support. I have considered many factors such as storage, reheating and most important nutritional value, but also satisfaction from meals.

This is just a draft, there is no quantities or details, recipes and dietary calculations, just few ideas. It is not a ISS food, but for short term mission should be sufficient. I strongly suggest some reheating method.

 

LIFE SUPPORT WORK GROUP

FOOD

by maciejm

 

Time of the mission: 7 days

Number of crew members: 6

Storage method: dried/processed/vacuum packed

Reheating method: Yet to be determined

 

Food supplies required during the 7 day mission would consist of the thermally preprocessed food with reduced humidity, fulfilling low residue requirements presented by CSTART. In the table below I have presented theoretical menu and food supplies for the time of the travel as well as additional emergency supplies that can be consumed in case of emergency extension of the mission. Volumes and detailed ingredients are yet to be determined.

 

I would recommend additionally to provide astronauts with food supplement (vitamins including vit. C, calcium and folic acid), to ensure nutritional requirements are matched.

 

I have designed a food to be a bite size and ready to consume, rehydration would be unnecessary. Satisfaction from meal would be ensured by providing variety of meals in interesting form and with different textures. Meals can be customised by exchanging ingredients to match personal preferences and dietary requirements, but pre seasoned.

 

Quality of food, and low risk of food poisoning would be a very high priority, therefore some preservatives must be added. Preservatives in thermal processed food, rapidly chilled and vacuum packed will reduce spoilage to minimum ensuring tasty and safe meals.

 

Food Items
Breakfast*	Cheese bites	Bacon cubes	White bread crackers	Egg cubes	Toasts filled with Jam ^	Hash-brown	Water Milk Tea+ Coffee+ Water OJ(no pulp)
Lunch*#	Baked potato cubes	Meat balls	Baked Zucchini	Clear Chicken soup		Tomato sauce<
	Rice balls	Baked Chicken cubes	Baked pumpkin			Mayo<
	Baked sweet potato	Stake cubes	Baked Carrot	Clear vegetable soup		Mustard<
	White flour Pasta	Fish cakes	Beetroot			BBQ sauce<
Dessert^	Doughnut filled with jam	Milk Chocolate bites	Mud cake filled with chocolate	Mini Mars Bar	Verity of pre-packed sweets (off the shelf)
Dinner (sandwich/toasted) on white bread)*	Ham and cheese	Roasted vegetable	Roasted beef and gherkins
Snacks	Dried apple (no skin), soya crisps (off the shelf), other

 

* Refers to bite size balls/cubes

^ Refers to bite size balls filled with second ingredient

# Refers to foods that require reheating

< Refers to food in tube

+ Refers to pre brewed beverage

 

Recipes, storage and reheating methods will be tested prior to flight.

 

I look for constructive comments and I will continue working on details of storage and recipes.

 

Sorry it has taken so very long for me to reply to this!  You have put a lot of work into the menu planning which I really appreciate.  Your dedication should have been rewarded with more attention than this post got.

One of my concerns is that perhaps we should try to avoid things which are likely to produce a lot of crumbs (e.g. toast, crackers, etc)?  I am not sure how big a problem this is likely to be.  I suppose eventually crumbs would get captured by air filters or something like that, so maybe it is not too big a deal.

Most of the other things look good, though.  I like the idea of using off-the-shelf stuff like mini Mars Bars for simple, high energy snacks.

Not that it really affects the choice of food at all, but I noticed up the top you had "Number of crew members: 6".  CLLARE is definitely a one-person mission, for the simple matter of mass restrictions.  Most of our calculations so far show that we are only just going to be able to fit things on a Falcon 9 with one person.  Maybe if we turn out to be better at keeping mass down than planned we could stretch it to two people, but I think anything more than that will be impossible without a larger (and hence more expensive) launch vehicle.