New dining table for International Space Station

The recent news item regarding the construction of a new dining table in the International Space Station raises some interesting points about the importance of human emotions and rituals, regardless of technological advances and it would appear – cost.

New dinner table top priority as ISS expands

“We are now going to have six people in orbit, so we will need to engineer another table, so we can all eat and chat together,” Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko said. Lunch is a ritual process in orbit,” he told journalists.

The average cost of lifting a kilogramme of anything to low earth orbit, typically where space stations and space shuttles spend their time aloft, is in the order of $100,000. Compared to this, the actual cost of food is negligible, in theory Astronauts should live on a diet of truffles and vintage champagne….and yet they crave simple foods that remind them of home, hash browns, m&m’s. They also place high levels of importance on how they eat…sharing meals together.

If we ever needed a reminder of how important such lowly matters as food and human contact are, this is a good reminder.

Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of food miles…