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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @11:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the spice-in-space dept.

Gastronauts: Developing food ready for the next space race:

For the new space race, astronauts and space tourists will want to eat a little better than the corn beef sandwiches, applesauce and high-calorie cubes of protein, fat and sugar consumed by NASA scientists in the 1960s.

But how to provide genuinely exciting and mouth-watering food that can also stir up happy memories of a home millions of miles away in the confines of zero gravity and restricted room of a space shuttle?

That's the challenge four academics led by Professor Marianna Obrist, Professor of Multisensory Experiences at the University of Sussex, have attempted to meet in their paper "Space Food Experiences: Designing Passenger's Eating Experiences for Future Space Travel Scenarios."

The paper develops three design concepts that integrate and tackle the functional, sensorial, emotional, social, and environmental/atmospheric aspects of eating experiences in space:

  • Spice Bomb Mixing—An "emotional" cleanser combating the diminished flavour perception in space caused by stuffiness in the nose. Solid spices and ingredients are not commonly used in space food because of the risk of them floating away. But the team propose a mixing pod which would dissolve into the food—injecting a meal with flavour and texture.
  • Flavour Journey 3-D Printer—An astronaut or tourist could order a flavour profile from family, friends, or chefs which would be recreated through a food printer within the space shuttle. Potentially an astronaut could enjoy a "bar" that integrates several courses in one print.
  • Earth Memory Bites—Small bites that contain distinct flavours representing different regions, cultures, or specific experiences and then embedded in a specific dining environment through projection mapping and VR for a shared dining experience with friends and family. Music, visual projections, atmospheric light, temperature, and humidity could all be used to recreate distinctive Earth atmospheres.

The paper also discusses how different lighting (e.g., red) and sonic (e.g., high pitch tunes) conditions can modulate how people experience and enjoy different food and drinks as well as how to bring in elements of surprise, semantic instability and ambiguity that can elicit moments of wonder from space diners who will have to ward off feelings of boredom and homesickness on flights lasting up to 14 months.

The ideas have been developed following an online survey of what potential astrotourists would want from their eating experience and refined following feedback from experts with experience working within governmental space agencies and private space companies.

Marianna Obrist et al. Space Food Experiences: Designing Passenger's Eating Experiences for Future Space Travel Scenarios, Frontiers in Computer Science (2019). DOI: 10.3389/fcomp.2019.00003


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:40PM (3 children)

    by gtomorrow (2230) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:40PM (#969595)

    First off, it's corned beef [wikipedia.org], not "corn beef". What's that? One of those newfangled meat substitutes made of corn? Ignorante!

    Secondly, what's wrong with corned beef sandwiches?!

    Thirdly, it's a team of Britischers discussing cooking of all things! Everybody knows that in hell the British are the cooks! For sure it'll look like the sludge Dave and Frank had to eat...and they were off to Jupiter! They're better off eating Space Food Sticks [wikipedia.org] and Tang!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:35PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:35PM (#969687)

    One of the issues listed is that everything tastes bland in zero-g. So who else to go to but the experts at feeding people bland food?