Initial Project Ideas: BioDesign Food for the Future

The guest lecture with Maggie Cobletnz was insightful. It allowed me the liberty to explore ideas for my project beyond just the technical process of food and also the behavior, understanding and mindset behind appetizing meals in space. She suggested that it would be helpful to focus on just one aspect of space food and design a project regardless of the rationality it would make to the other aspects. I think that helped me to filter my focus on the zero-gravity nature of space and how could one encounter a good dining experience using the utensils that we would otherwise be using on Earth.

Maggie mentioned that while astronauts use forks, knifes and scissors during their meals, they eat their food from packets where their meal is preserved. This fact benefited me to analyze how people would experience eating food in packets when space tourism would be implemented. I believe to make space tourism’s food experience even more hospitable; it would be interesting to challenge the idea of eating food from packets and create a design that would make the dining experience similar to the ones we have on Earth. When we travel on commercial flights, the food that is served to us is removed from their respective trays, heated, presented back on the trays aesthetically, and then served to us. What if space tourism also incorporated a step by step process to make the food more presentable, appetizing and as good as dining from any other restaurant considering the zero-gravity nature of space?