Cooking Pasta on Mars
Fact: Humans need food and water to survive. On Earth as in space. Yet you don’t often find talks of food in science fiction – a passing mention at best and pills are often used – while finding and preparing food in space or, worse, on another planet would present rather a crucial challenge to explorers.
Space food has made a lot of progress since the dry freeze stuff they used to feed the Apollo guys with but food on board the International Space Station (ISS) still has to come largely out of pre-cooked/frozen microwaveable meals in pouches that can be sucked at, for reasons of microgravity. Chefs have been called upon to prepare Christmas or New Year’s Eve special meals for the Station but they still come mostly in that easy to eat format. Some adventurous astronauts do try cooking – most of them are scientists to some degree or another so enjoy twisting their brains over a problem – but the experiment is still not part of their daily exercise problem, possibly because they do have easy access to supplies from Earth. And yet cooking in space presents a real challenge and one that must be tackled for human exploration missions.
So you send your heroes on a deep space mission. Far away from home and its comfort. What could be better for the soul – and stomach – than the perfect dish of pasta?
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