Wired: “The Food we’ll eat on the Journey to Mars”

Psychologists have no idea how the so-called break-off phenomenon—the sense of detachment that can arise when our planet slips from view—will affect future astronauts’ mental state. What’s more, any communication with the now-invisible Earth will be subject to as much as a 45-minute lag. Kelley Slack, one of the experts on NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance team, recently told NBC, It will be the first time that we’ve been totally disconnected from Earth. Since the summer of 1975, when NASA convened a group of experts to discuss permanent settlement in space, researchers have warned of a psychological condition called “solipsism syndrome”, in which reality feels dreamlike and lonely astronauts become prone to self-destructive mistakes. Mars could be the theory’s first real test.

Food assumes added importance under all conditions of isolation and confinement because normal sources of gratification are denied, Jack Stuster, an anthropologist and NASA consultant, wrote in Bold Endeavors, his 1996 book on the behavioral issues associated with extreme environments. Usually, the longer the confinement, the more important food becomes. Managers of offshore oil rigs, supertankers, and Antarctic research stations all appreciate the importance of food to maintaining group morale and productivity in isolated, remote, and confined situations. Stuster noted that food has become such an important element onboard fleet ballistic missile submarines that, for years, meals have been served at cloth-covered tables in pleasant paneled dining rooms.

Nicola Twilley

A vital topic for humanity’s long-term space exploration plans, food is inextricably linked with morale, since other sources of satisfaction will be severely limited. In some sense we experienced a lighter form in recent months during the lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic – and cooking was a source of comfort for many people. Somehow I doubt Elon Musk is taking any of this into consideration when drafting his grandiose plans to colonize Mars…

Maggie Coblentz, the Space Exploration Initiative’s head of food research, created a special helmet for eating in zero g. Photograph: Tony Luong

Coblentz has also considered sending brine into orbit, to evaporate into salt. As Phil Williams, who recently launched the world’s first astropharmacy research program at the University of Nottingham, told me recently, One of the problems of making crystals on Earth is that you have convective currents. Driven by gravity, these currents affect the quality of crystal growth. You can get far bigger crystals with fewer defects in microgravity, he said. Chefs and foodies already pay a premium for the large, hollow pyramids of Maldon sea salt, a shape preferred for its crunch, its intermittent bursts of saltiness, and its superior adhesion to baked goods. No one yet knows what culinary properties the crystalline perfection of space salt might possess. Many pharmaceuticals rely on crystallization too, and any alteration in those structures can change the drug’s therapeutic effects. There may one day be compounds that we can only make off-planet and bring back, Williams said, conjuring up a dazzling vision of the future in which drug factories and gourmet brine ponds orbit Earth.