Beginning on monday, july 18th. Each week American History tvs reel america gives you archival films that provide context for todays Public Affairs issues. This marks the 40th anniversary of the air and space museum on july 1st, 1976. Leading up to the celebration, reel america will be showing a series of nasa films, up next, science reporter, food for space travelers. A half hour 1966 nasa tv program, one of 13 produced in cooperation with m. I. T. And wgbh boston. This episode examines the problem of feeding astronauts in weightlessness and the anticipated Long Duration missions of the apollo program. When john glenn got hungry during the preorbit flight, he opened a advice or on the helmet and popped a high energy tablet in his mounl. This pill and water and occasional squeezing of baby food were more than glenn needed for the four and a half hours he was in orbit. The purpose of the meal was to find out whether man could eat in a weightless condition. Meal time was hardly more than a light snack. It even at that it was considerably more sophisticated than the bound paper bag and thermos diet common in the earliest inflight feeding in world with a ii. Food signists have been hard at work studying and developing space foods and measuring their effects upon man. The problems even for short flights have been enormous. As we continue to launch longer and longer missions into speech, entirery new considerations must be met and dealt with in planning and providing food for space travelers. Space food scientists are doing this is our story today on science reporter. Were at the u. S. Army labs in massachusetts where the Space Administration is supporting Considerable Research into the problems of space feeding. The care and feeding of an astronaut is by no means a simple proposition. A life support system . Which man cannot only stay alive but function effectively while in space. The temperature both in the cabin and inside the space suit must be kept within critical tolerances. Astronaut must have oxygen to breathe and must be systems capable of removing Carbon Dioxide and toxic gases and other waste matter. There must be an adequate supply of water and the astronaut must have food. In many ways this is the most challenging problem since the amount he needs depends on what he has to do. Furthermore, hell have no stove or refrigerator and no garbage disposable and limited amount of space to store which food he will require. These problems of space feeding were imagined more than a century ago with a very entertaining story with a voyage to the moon in a space craft called simply the projectile, a frenchman and appreciative of the good life, didnt overlook the necessity of providing his space travelers with a menu, one that was rather more elaborate than were able to offer our 20th century crews. Breakfast began with three bowls of excellent soup prepared from the prime argentinian beef. And tender and such can you lent as if brought from the english eating house. The vegetables and followed by cups of tea with bread and butter after the american fashion. The beverage was declared excellent and due to the inclusion of the leaves of which the emperor had given the benefit of the travelers and lastly to crown, brought out a fine bottle of wine found by chance in the provision box. Three friends drank to the union of the earth and to satellite. Its unlikely our astronauts will ever enjoy a meal like the one jules verns crew ate but to find out what scientific work is going on in space feeding we talked to paula chance. We have a variety of the types of food available for gemny and apollo missions. Shrimp cocktail which could also be a beef pot roast and a mixture such as a pud ding and grapefruit drink which could be cocoa. Just add water and serve . Thats right. The bites are the beef sandwich or chicken or cheese sandwich and peanut cube could be a sear yal cube of some sort. You have a variety of items, dont you think you could put together a well balanced diet for astronauts. We put a balanced diet together but it is based solely on em pier cal knowledge in that its based on the recommendations for the average american adult male. These might not be what you actually need in space . Well, the fact is we do not know the requirement for all nutrients for man here on earth. An example of this is for vitamins, certain vitamins and certain trace minerals, the recommendations are based solely on animal experimentation, in other words, there are no human da data. You need this data you feel . Yes, especially when you cant extract anything from your environment. Youre up there with you either take it with you or you dont have it. I see. So that one must study man and study the nutrient requirements, assess the requirement in humans under resting conditions. Just what you need to stay alive . Exactly. This will vary from individual to individual and you must study that facet of the problem also. This is before you can introduce the elements of the new environment that youre going to have to deal with. For example, the stresses youre going to have to deal with in the new environment in space flight. What kind of stresses . Let me show you. Here we see a series of stresses as one might expect during a space flight. First the effect of g forces as you would get on liftoff or reentry as done. This is the acceleration and desell race during the flight . Exactly. This is an impact test as you would get on a hard landing for instance. Here we see vibration. This occurs especially on liftoff in combination with the acceleration and may vary considerably with the type of boosting. Wouldnt be as violent as that i hope . No at this level were seeing the tolerance limits. Here we see the effect of noise combined with a disorientation. Noise of the rocket motor. Yes, and also just the noise of friction as a tower would function. This is long term type stressor, this will always be present, 100 oxygen at 5 psi for example and mixtures of gases were now studying. Now this is an example of disorientation as one gets with tumbling as probablery well remember when the power is off, space craft tends to tumble. I see. And youre likely to get dizzy i suppose. Probably dont notice the dizziness but you may be altering the vest tib lar apparatus when you combine it with weightlessness and this is the most critical, i think and least known factor of the space flight stresses, certainly the one of continuing duration. Do they really affect your need for food . Well, the short duration stresses are probably do affect your appetite momentarily but i dont think they necessarily affect your total nutrient requirement over any extended period of time. Those Long Durations stresses, the altered atmosphere and weightlessness and radiation, we didnt mention, might singularly or in combination substantially alter nutrient requirements. Therefore one must study what nutrient requirements are and what they are with these stresses either individually or in combination and then redo the whole thing in the actual environment of space. Then with this knowledge we can truly say weve established realistic nutrition criteria for the development of food systems. To learn about research and nutritional requirements and how they are affected by the stresses of space flight we talked with dr. Doris call lo way at berkeley. We do know something about knew tree enlts and nutrient requirements, there are some gaps in our knowledge but what things are essential and what arent and we have even greater gaps on quantity fiction for an individual person but we do know something. We get along with limited amount of knowledge right here because we eat a wide variety of things, some things today and another tomorrow and mixture of things at the given meal. With the astronaut population we dont have this flexibility to cover our area with less than precise knowledge. We can only send a limited array of things with the men. If we have forgotten anything, we dont have a chance to go back and add it or to them to get out somewhere and pick it up on their own. What are these essential knew tree ents they must have . The same they sell in local bread, for minerals for your skeleton and vitamins to carry out metabolic processes, regulators. If you dont have these youll be in trouble . Serious trouble, indeed you will be. How do you find out what a human being has to have . The very best way to go into a laboratory to find out what a Representative Group of people needs. We often work with students. Would you like to see how we go about this . Yes, i would. A group of test subjects, mainly students in our pent House Laboratory at the university of california at berkeley. Looks like a very luxurious way to do an experiment. The men enjoy it, golden gate through the window too. Heres a man doing graded treadmill work which is a standard every day for every subject to keep all things constant as possible. And sometimes learning german as he goes up to 3 miles an hour on the treadmill. This is bicycle work. In this case we are just measuring the Energy Expenditure of the subject doing a known amount of work on the bicycle. By measuring how much oxygen he is using and how much Carbon Dioxide it puts out we know what his Energy Expenditure has been. You can relate the amount of work thats right and were interested in how they handle their food metabolically and trying to determine total body losses, weve analyzed things people dont like like bath water and whiskers and so forth. Once you know the basic requirements, is that all you have to send along with the astronaut . No, the weight of these essential knew trne nutrient, ts and minerals wouldnt weigh more than three ounces even if we were liberal about it and two ounces if we were down to minimum. The thing that determines this large bulk of food that we normally eat is our need for calories and for energy. What do we use that for . For everything, staying alive. The basil rate you use for heartbeat and breathing and just necessary body functions. Which you can determine quite easily, the metabolism test i think youre familiar with. How many calories would that come to . It would depend on your age and size and sex, 1600 to 1800 a day and in addition to what activities you carry out will demand for energy. In the case of the astronauts, probable a a lot of said entry life, perhaps 2500 calories. Why couldnt you put that in a pill and give that to take . You could but you couldnt swallow the pill. The most energetic food would be pure fat and we would need something over half a pound to provide the Energy Requirement and that would be the size of a hockey puck and if this most energetic food is fat, could you make it out of fat . You couldnt for other reasons we already said. In addition to that you cant just utilize fat by itself, you have to have other nutrient burning along with it otherwise you get headachy and nauseous. We must tend some cash hydrate as well. Two or three ounces of essential nutrients and two or three more of carbohydrate and were up to 6 or 8 ounces plus the fat to make up the calories and chances are we wouldnt send that much fat along but its not pal atable. If we sent anything like you would normally prefer as a composition, it would be something more than a pound of weight of dry food plus all of the water and oxygen and other critical nutrients that you need. Before space flight menus can be prepared, other considerations must be met. In order to find out about the development of food for space and way it is packaged and stored and prepared and eaton s, we talked to the chief of the serial and general product section. The Food Division has been working for a number of years on the development of Food Products for military rations. Many of the problems encountered in these developments are also applicable to some of the problems encountered in space feeding. Are there special problems in space . I would think there would be there are a great many new problems which we had to overcome in development of Food Products. To illustrate these, were severely limited in the amount of weight and volume that we can tolerate. Also, there are severe environmental stresses such as acceleration and desell ration and things like that. To overcome some of these severe problems, weve developed a series of nearly 50 different food items which can be used for space feeding. These can be divided into two major categories, system of rehydratable foods, dehydrated by various means, typical of which is Freeze Dried Foods like these. You can get some of these on market now, cant you . They are beginning to be available commercially. What is this. Freeze dried peaches. Must be meat over here. Meat and gravy. And vegetables i guess. Those are peas and we had corn. These are samples of types of items that are being used as freeze dried items to be rehydrated and we have a great many bite sized foods which are compressed in dense high calorie source of foods, typical of which we have fruit cake, sandwiches, beef sandwiches. And items like toast. Now how can you eat toast in a space craft without getting crumbs all over . We had to deadvise a system for coating the toast with a high melting fat coating to overcome crumbs and disinterest grags. Another system were working on is packaging the bite in an edible film. This isnt selofhane. No, its actually nutritious. What do you do about these rehydratable items, you cant eat them on a plate with a knife and fork . All comes packaged in a unit such as this. A meal for an astronaut. Inside we have the series of packages. This is an example of a rehydratable package, the astronaut cuts the ends of the package off and inserts water gun metering in the required amount of water to rehydrate the product. I dont see how youre saving weight if you have to add the water back again . Thats correct, at present we have to carry sufficient water both for drinking and rehydration. But were working on systems such as the using the water from fuel cell by product for rehydration and drinking and systems for recycling water. You have grapefruit, right . This is grapefruit drink. 5 ounces of water, 2 to 5 minutes. Is it requires a certain length of time to make sure the beverage is dissolved in the water. The package is needed to aid rehydration and one way valve prevents water from flying around the capsule. How do you drink the grapefruit juice . The other end is cut and a feeding tube is removed from the package. Oh. Where the astronaut inserts this directly in his mouth and squeeze it like toothpaste . Correct. And drinks the product actually quite delicious. What do you do with this . You cant throw it out the window . Attached to the package is a germicide pill inserted into the package after a product is eaten to prevent residual decomposition and odor formation and fermentation and the package is wrapped up and put in a disposal container. Knowing the kinds of foods which can be prepared stored and used in the spacecraft and nutritional requirements of the astronauts, diet gss can begin to prepare menus that are suitable for space. To learn about Menu Preparation and acceptance testing we talked to mary clicka, a nutritionist. Dr. Calloway has told us about the essential knew tree ents we require and displayed 50 different i assume are nutritious items to choose for. How do you put this together and come up with a menu . Nasa gives requirements for the menu and the length of the mission is quite important. It more or less determines what variety we need on the menu. The longer the mission, the more variety we need to assure acceptable and consumption throughout life. You wouldnt want to use the same menu every day, they would get bored with it . Thats right. Cube or volume of the food is important too. This is also related to the length of the mission. The longer the mission, the more concerned you are with the amount of space the food takes. For example in rehydratable foods, while they are very acceptable, they require much more cube than the bite sized items. I see. You say acceptable, do you know what the astronauts like in the way of food . We get their preferences before flight. We actually check out a menu with them to be sure they will eat and like everything on the menu before it is accepted for flight use. What other factors do you have to take into consideration . Texture of the foods, good menu combination. Were concerned with feeding the astronauts as the housewife is in feeding her family to eat. You wouldnt want to serve peas and chocolate sauce no matter how nutritious they are . It doesnt sound good and concerned can low gas products, things that dont cause distress and color of food and concerned with the acceptability of the food. How do you find out other than actually trying this food on an astronaut its acceptability . We test each individual item separately. These are the booths where its being done. Hes given a sample and tastes the food and then rates it on a card, telling just exactly how much he likes or does not like this particular food. Then we average these values and we find out how the average consumer would like this particular type of food. Would you like to taste it . Its a peanut cube. The astronauts like those. Very good. Thank you very much. This is the life support systems evaluator at Wright Patterson air force base in ohio. It was designed to aid and Research Conducted to determine precise nutritional requirements to evaluate foods planned for longterm space flights and to investigate personal hygiene procedures. It is maned by four subjects, two of whom are required to wear an unpressurized space suit for 16 days. The subjects activities are under constant surveillance 24 hours daily. Temperature, humidity and other environmental variables were checked periodically by the chamber operators. All diets were scientifically form lated and each portion was weighed to the tenth of a gram to determine the precise balance between intake and weight. Once it was passed through by way of its air lock, waste matter was disposed of in the same way. A threeday diet cycle of precooked dehydrated food with bite sized compressed items and matching freshly prepared diet were compared for nutritional value as well as for subject acceptance. The dehydrated foods were packaged in metal foil envelopes to retain flavor and freshness. The results obtained showed dehydrated and bite sized foods were very acceptable for potential use in aerospace systems. In addition to testing the food itself, the packaging, storing and preparation and disposal means are also tested to determine how well they will work in the space craft. As weve seen, foods for space f