Everyone loves a good home-cooked meal, but sometimes the best you can hope for is a bacon cube. That was the case for the Apollo 7 astronauts, who had no choice but to munch on a freeze-dried diet for every meal of their 11-day mission. Fortunately, even though the choices were limited, most of the breakfasts contained bacon in the form of cubes, and the astronauts loved them. "Happiness is a package of bacon squares on day 10," Walt Cunningham messaged back to Earth.
Bacon also made an appearance in the first meal eaten on the Moon, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin dined on bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pink grapefruit drink, and coffee in the Lunar Module, shortly after touching down at the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969.
It wasn't all Tang in space:
- Astronauts today eat much of the same food as folks back on Earth, although the sodium content is typically reduced by about 40 percent.
- Cookies and bread are banned from space flights, as the little particles can fly around in zero gravity and gum up the works.
- NASA has funded a project that will allow astronauts to create pizzas via a 3D printer.