The reason why astronaut food is compressed food

Sugars, fats, proteins, as well as nutrients such as inorganic salts, vitamins, and water.

Astronaut rations can be divided into conventional flight rations, emergency rations, and life-saving rations. Conventional flight rations refer to the food that is envied when flying in orbit, emergency rations are the food eaten through the feeding hole of the helmet under the pressurized condition of the spacesuit, and life-saving rations are the spare food when the astronauts return to the ground from the spacecraft.

The water that astronauts drink is small molecule water. The bioavailability of small molecule water is high, the amount of water is small, the urination is also less, but the biological effect in the water is not reduced, which is especially suitable for astronauts who sail in space. If you stay in the spacecraft for a short time, you can drink all-natural, mineral-rich small molecule water.

The diet of astronauts is a big problem among long-term astronauts, and based on 1 kilogram of food per person per day, 5 crew members need nearly 2,000 kilograms a year. This takes up a lot of space in the spacecraft and also costs a lot of rocket launches. Therefore, for long-term manned spaceflight, the best way to produce food is for astronauts to produce it themselves.

The growing plants can purify the air, the fruits of the plants are for human consumption, the stems and leaves are fed to the animals, and the excrement of people and animals is used as fertilizer for plants, forming a closed ecological circulation system, improving the living environment, providing a place for labor and recreation, and obtaining fresh food in a steady stream. Scientists are looking for and cultivating plants and animals suitable for space cultivation. Among the many food crops, Japanese and American scientists have taken a fancy to the most common sweet potato.

Sweet potato is a kind of sugary, high calorie food, high nutritional value, in addition to rich starch, baked sweet potato also contains essential iron, calcium and other trace elements. It contains more vitamins and amino acids than rice and white flour, especially the vitamins A, B, C and cellulose contained in rice flour are lacking. Sweet potatoes can be eaten raw or cooked, and can also be processed into a variety of sweet, low-water foods.

The tuber roots of sweet potatoes are drought-tolerant, alkali-tolerant, and cold-tolerant, and adapt to a variety of climates. The stems and vines grow with the ground chain and take up very little space. Sweet potatoes are easy to cultivate, a small slice and a small section of stems can be cultivated into a plant, and several kilograms of sweet potatoes can be harvested.

Sweet potatoes are naturally not the only food crop suitable for growing in space, scientists are still looking for them.

It has been reported that scientists from Japan and the United States are currently working together to develop sweet potatoes as space food for astronauts. The reason is: sweet potato has high nutritional value, in addition to containing starch, it also contains essential iron, calcium and other trace elements and vitamins, it contains many types of vitamins and nitrogen acids, the content is larger, higher than rice, white flour and fine grains, especially it contains vitamin A, B, C and cellulose is lacking in rice and flour; Sweet potatoes are adaptable to the environment, cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant, alkali-tolerant, have a high survival rate, and are suitable for space growth.

If the development is successful, one day, sweet potatoes will be sold for a hundred times the price, and the darlings of the same generation will travel in space together. It's not worth quietly.