![]() ![]() ![]() Pillsbury, wanting to hop on the Tang bandwagon, created something that seemed space-y: sticks of compressed carbs, proteins, and fats with kid-friendly flavors like caramel, peanut butter, and chocolate. Space Food Sticks were released to the public before NASA decided to take them into space. (According to Pillsbury parent company General Mills, those cubes went into space with astronaut Scott Carpenter aboard the five-hour-long mission of the Aurora 7, in 1962.) Don't be fooled by these origins, however. The creatively named Space Food Sticks were a pet project of Pillsbury, a continuation of earlier work the company did for NASA on "space food cubes" in the early '60s. Space Food SticksĬoncept: Compact, nutritionally dense sticks of food are fun for both children and astronauts. Astronaut ice cream is still on sale at gift shops today, and its biggest influence seems to be on other novelty ice creams like Dippin' Dots. While not a huge hit with astronauts, freeze-dried ice cream did capture the imagination of snackers, who bought the ice cream as souvenirs from space and science museums. The astronauts found it too crumbly, a big problem in zero-gravity environments, and the maiden voyage proved to be the ice cream's final trip to space. The Whirlpool Corporation developed freeze-dried ice cream for NASA, and the ice cream made its maiden voyage on Apollo 7. The Apollo missions were underway, though hadn't yet landed a man on the moon. Freeze-dried ice cream kids can eat on Earth.Īstronaut ice cream came onto the scene in 1968. The concept: Freeze-dried ice cream astronauts can eat in space. But is it the future of breakfast drinks? Nah. Today Tang is owned by Kraft, who has saved it from novelty and irrelevance by marketing it hard in South America and other international markets. Shortly after, NASA sent Tang into space with the Gemini 4 crew, solidifying Tang's new place on grocery store shelves as part of an astronaut breakfast. Sales didn't really take off, however, until astronaut John Glenn consumed Tang in orbit aboard the Mercury flight in 1962. The orange-flavored powder was released to consumers in 1959, when it was marketed as a vitamin-packed breakfast drink "you don't squeeze, unfreeze, or refrigerate." In 1957, food scientist William Mitchell developed Tang while working for the General Foods Corporation. There's a widely spread misconception that NASA invented Tang in the early '60s. The concept: Powdered orange drink is a convenient way to make water less boring. ![]() But here now, a look back at what we thought lay ahead: Tang Space-ready foods feel more like a novelt y than an inevitability. At times, it seems as if we're no closer to serious space tourism than we were in the 1960s, and NASA's current nutrition program is more concerned with making "earth food" edible in the space, as opposed to the other way around. Even as the space race came to an end in the early '70s, "future-minded" products still had the look of astronaut-inspired food. Edibles were compressed, flash-frozen, and otherwise messed with until finally even ice cream was nothing more than a crumbly packaged product. This "preoccupation with the future," when it came to food, looked like astronaut food. The space program of the ‘50s and ‘60s changed America’s "conception of itself, as if seen anew from space." "It was an increasing preoccupation with the future and technology that helped change not only the country's look in the 1950s and '60s, but also, in some ways, its very conception of itself, as if seen anew from space." "An effect was much more than simply a spillover from the silvery streamlining of the space program," he writes. In a 2007 New York Times l ook at the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, Randy Kennedy points out the inextricable tie between the Space Age of the '60s and pop culture. The moon landing forever changed our relationship with space - with the promise of space travel and the burgeoning space race came a new vision for the future of food, as American companies were inspired by how astronauts were forced to eat. In the years that followed, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created, bringing with it a serious program that eventually landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969. The launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 inspired Americans to look upwards to the night sky. ![]()
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