Feeding astronauts requires science, engineering, and a deft hand with spices. The difficulties 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.

NASA and the International Space Station both take the nutritional needs of astronauts very very seriously, and not only in terms of the RDAs, but in terms of the culinary arts. Anyone who has lived on mass produced restricted menus for any length of time knows that what we eat affects our mood and general sense of well-being far more than our nutritional requirements might suggest. Think for a minute how much we sometimes craves specific tastes, or "comfort" foods. Or how very dispiriting it is to eat bland, flavorless food for any length of time.

In that light, as part of their overall plan to send a person into space by 2015, India's Defence Food Research Laboratory, under the direction of A. S. Bawa is attempting to perfect a tasty, healthy, safe, and practical curry for consumption in space. It's tricky; Indians tend to favor curry on the hot end of things, and there are some potential digestion problems with overly spicy food in space. Other Indian dishes that represent cultural "comfort food" include dosa, a sort of crispy rice breakfast pancake filled with a potato mixture, roughly similar to a burrito. Bhajis, also deep fried, present a particular difficulty in space cuisine. As space exploration and development become increasingly international, so too is astronaut cuisine, especially aboard the International Space Station, where astronauts from the U.S., Japan, Korea and Russia have gladly welcomed newcomers' native foods as temporary additions to their diet in space. After all, it beats silk worms.