NASA's remaining shuttle is nearly 30 years old and scheduled to be retired in 2010. NASA's new spaceship, Orion, won't be ready for launch until 2015, according to the current budget and schedule. NASA is reported to be examining alternatives for maintaining space transport, either moving up the completion date for Orion—an expensive strategy—or else extending the current shuttle program (also expensive, and with every trip the aging shuttle runs a higher risk of accident or disaster.)
NASA's quandary is nothing new. In fact, it brings up the same problem we've been looking at pretty much since our first ventures into space: what's the best way to get there? Putting stuff on a big rocket, fueled with super-test fossil-fuels, and blasting it into space by sheer force has worked pretty well, so far. Except it's expensive, and rockets tend to blow up, since . . . well . . . they're explosive by design.
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of eating in micro gravity include problems of stray crumbs or drops of fluid floating around and lodging in equipment. That means, for instance, that salt and pepper have to be in liquid form. Physiological changes in low gravity include constantly blocked sinuses, which adversely affect human senses of taste and smell. The problems of cooking in very small spaces, with limited access to water, or refrigeration, or even power, and of disposing of packaging materials are also substantial. In space, everyone cleans their plates.
