Goodbye freeze-dried astronaut food. In space you can eat a good plate of pasta.

After the invention of frying machines French fries Baking cookies in space, American researcher fromHarvard university I recently found a way to cook pasta inside space stations. The doctor’s goal Larissa Chu It was to Overcoming the consumption of freeze-dried products By designing a machine that allows astronauts to cook food. Basically a kind of space kettle in which you can cook pasta or other foods. The contents of this ambitious research are explained in his thesis “Cooking in Space: Food Systems and Technologies for Long-Term Space Travel”.

How does a space “boiler” work?

Dr. Chu chose to work on a “microgravity water cooker” Because grains—an excellent, storable source of protein and carbohydrates—usually require boiling. However, boiling food in space is not easy at all. On Earth, gravity keeps water at the bottom of the pan. In microgravity, however, keeping water in the pan so it doesn’t float away is a big problem. But water molecules are also attracted to each other and to any surface they touch; when water is weightless, capillary action and surface tension can have a much greater effect on keeping water in one area of ​​the pan. That’s where Zhou’s invention comes in with his Hot bitThis is the name of the machine, which exploits these forces to trap water in the narrowest corner of the boiler thanks to its wedge shape.

The future bowl looks like a long slice of cake tilted at its tip and is made of aluminum and Pyrex. There is another problem with boiling itself.On Earth, buoyancy-driven convection, where colder, denser water sinks beneath warmer liquid, relies on gravity to evenly distribute heat and remove bubbles from the surface. In space, this does not happen. Boiling water, on the other hand, creates larger bubbles that move irregularly, with the risk of not cooking the food properly. Therefore, food has never been cooked by boiling in space. However, in a hot pot, the heating elements are mounted on the outside of the aluminum shell to heat a large area of ​​the pot, thus reducing the need for gravitational convection to evenly heat the water. The metal lid of the pot also has a pressure valve to release steam.

Changing the pace of space

While the safety of astronauts and the success of the mission are always top priorities, many researchers have long viewed culinary comforts in space as superficial. But Zhou and a group of other food scientists insist that their work is essential to the physical and mental health of astronauts, especially on long missions. Ariel EkblowFounder and CEO of the MIT Space Exploration InitiativeAurelia Institutewhich is researching future space habitats, says it’s time to “Think of life in space as being as much about thriving in space as it is about surviving.To demonstrate this vision of a more comfortable space life, the Aurelia Institute is building a mock space habitat called the Tesserae Pavilion, which will open in early August in Boston It was then displayed in Seattle. While planning the project, Ekblow and a colleague interviewed nearly two dozen astronauts, who often commented that cooking and eating tastier food would improve their well-being. For this reason, H0tp0t will be hanging in the experimental habitat’s kitchen.

H0tp0t future

Dr. Chu still wants to continue developing Hot Spots. The goal is to try to adapt it to the system. Low temperature vacuum cookingThis way the bowl stays clean and the boiled water can be reused. Chu is also looking for ways his technology could be useful on Earth. Imagine a system that gives people a way to cook food during disasters, but is careful not to impose a humanitarian application that is not really useful. “The dream would be to develop technology for space in parallel with that for terrestrial applications,” the researcher declared.