Another problem with pencils is graphite is conductive, and you really REALLY don't want all those little bits shorting something out.

In the marketing team's defense, astronaut ice cream is probably what you'd get if an astronaut took regular ice cream into the vacuum of space, rather than something astronauts eat on the space station

That may be true Adam, but remember that Homer Simpson successfully ate an entire bag of potato chips on the Space Shuttle and everyone landed safely

man i love explosively decompressed ice cream

So I love looking into this topic so here's all the things that I know: First space food was stored in what are essentially toothpaste tubes. The food had to be blended into a liquid or paste so for things like applesauce that was fine but for other menu items like "Meat and vegetable stew" it was a lot more gross. The metal tubes also tended to be heavier than the foods inside. They moved on to using freeze dried foods later and also food cubes. Food cubes were special as they could be eaten without any preparation and were used to supplement the regular freeze dried menu. The food cubes were also generally quite dry but were coated in oil or gelatin to prevent crumbing, and were bite sized so an entire piece could fit into your mouth. These new types of food also offered an expanded menu, and during the Apollo missions, the astronauts even got a hot water dispenser so the freeze dried meals could be enjoyed while warm. After the Apollo missions, each mission had a freezer onboard and so they could just eat real ice cream instead of the freeze dried stuff. The shuttle missions were the first to introduce fresh foods. Fruits like bananas, oranges, apples, and vegetables like celery and carrots were brought up. However, bananas and oranges had to be discontinued on later flights as it was found that the smell would permeate the space shuttle cabin and astronauts would associate the queasiness from microgravity to the smell of the fruits. Nowadays the food has gotten a lot better. Yes they do have the freeze dried stuff, and the stuff that resembles military rations, but they also have fresh foods and shelf stable foods that you'd be able to find in a regular grocery store. Astronauts have condiments (salt and pepper in liquid form, hot sauce, etc). There is even a coffee machine on the ISS that is able to brew a fresh cup of coffee in the microgravity environment of the space station. Also you mentioned that astronauts can't eat bread, but you didn't mention that the bread substitute is tortillas. Also, these tortillas are provided to NASA by Taco Bell, because Taco Bell was able to develop a tortilla with a long shelf life of 12 (!!!) months. Anyway that's all the space food fun facts I have for now. Thank you for reading. If you're interested in finding out more there's a whole wikipedia article here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_food

The freeze dried fruit in the early 90s MREs was the GOAT of all MRE desserts. I will die on this hill. By day 15 of a field problem it was the only thing I had to look forward to.

When I was in 10th grade biology, our teacher was teaching us about peristaltic motion and asked for a volunteer. He had me stand on my head, take a bit of something and swallow. I've never forgotten what peristaltic motion is or how it works.

Fisher pens are great for field notes though. Use them on a page from a Write in the Rain notebook and you can make legible notes while the paper and pen are underwater.

Would love if you could also talk about MRE's in some video, or maybe just food for combat in general. Seems like it would be a great "Old Man Ragusea talks about history and food" video

Dude ive NEVER eaten freeze-dried ice cream and now i just NEED to try it

I got a pack of "space ice cream" for my 13th birthday. I finally ate it when I was 27. It was pretty good.

MREs are pretty cool from a food science perspective; I'd definitely like to learn more about those

Also, the _entire_ point of freeze-dried food is saving weight by letting you rehydrate it with plentiful water at your destination. If you have to carry that water with you, freeze drying and rehydrating is just extra work.

As a DC-area kid who visited the Air & Space probably 20 times through my childhood, I approve this message.

I don't know why but I enjoyed this video to a higher degree than normal. Maybe the joyful optimism. Maybe because space stuff is rad.

As a fellow lifelong fan of space exploration, this video had me grinning the entire time. Thanks for this one!!

Nowadays, my favorite part of watching Adam's channel is listening to what sentences he begins to say to indicate when he will announce the sponsor.

Ducks cannot survive space travel because they do depend on gravity to swallow, meaning no future human colony world is currently expected to possess ducks.

Oh man, I love the Russian Space Pencil story. Not for any merit to the actual story, but because it’s probably the single greatest example of the Russian cultural phenomenon of smekalka. Smekalka translates into something like “native wit”. As a cultural phenomenon, it effectively espouses that Russians as a culture have a unique ability to come up with effective, simple solutions to complex problems. The Space Pencil shows that smekalka is so ingrained in Russian culture that it even manifests in outside stereotypes about the culture.

I came across these in a gift shop literally last week, and suddenly, childhood memories came rushing back. I think it’s been 10 years since I previously saw a package of space ice cream, so this video was pretty timely…

I love freeze dried ice cream, it's great (and can be gotten cheaply at hiking goods stores)

Those last 10 seconds made me feel all the feels

I am more and more convinced that I love this channel because Adam seems like an older version of myself. Food, archeaology, music theory and space- those are literally my prime interests. Thank you for all the content, and thank you for being relatable to all the outsider kids like I was!

Man i felt that sponsor transition coming when he mentioned freeze dried coffee lmao. Great video on the subject.

I watch these videos for stress relief. Honestly.

You look like if someone tried to draw markiplier from memory and confused him with John wick halfway through

My dad was in the air force and worked at offut AFB in the early 90s which is basically right with SAC which also has a great museum. I remember being only maybe five years old and he brought some special astronaut ice cream home for the kids and we absolutely loved it. The idea worked as intended even though it wasn’t actually astronaut food.

These "space" foods feel more appropriate for camping or backpacking.

Adam and his family have faith of the heart. They can reach any star.

The moment he had that spoon with the instant coffee powder in his hand, I knew what was coming. And he didn't disappoint.^^

The thing about smell being part of flavor for food and taste makes sense. When I had COVID-19 and I couldn't smell for weeks, I ate a ton of nongshim spicy ramen, pepper flakes, and spicy hot cheetos.

My mind has been so corrupt that when Adam was writing the words "Space Pen" I subconsciously thought he was going to continue writing.

Hey Adam! I work at NASA and am a huge fan of your channel! My roommate also works here and is a huge cook and fan of your channel too! (He literally keeps a bottle of white wine in our fridge 24/7). Love your enthusiasm for the space program and that enterprise gag got me! We have a large facility here where the real enterprise was tested and it's pretty cool! We also love our astronaut ice cream!

Regarding pencils in space, also sharpening wooden pencils! Even more flammable shreds flying around the interior! Mechanical pencil lead breaks easily, especially if using .5mm, so even ignoring flammable graphite flecks an engineering mechanical pencil would be the next-best - though the thicker leads need to be sharpened.

Heston Blumenthal got a bacon sandwich onto the ISS for British astronaut Tim Peake to eat by canning it. The was a good documentary a few years ago about HB's attempts to make the best meals he could that would pass NASA's strict rules so they could actually be sent up.

Awesome video! What I think is a similar story is that of Dippin Dots, the ice cream company. You see them everywhere but they were on the brink of bankruptcy a few years ago. What keeps them afloat, not so appetizingly, is using the same techniques to process fuel. Its worth looking into if you're interested.

If you didn't know Enterprise was a test article and never actually went to space or orbit. It was only intended to test atmospheric flight. So maybe you should become an Atlantis family!

I *KNEW* a Star Trek reference was coming as soon as you said "we are an Enterprise family." Respect.

That ship is also why I got into science. I still follow professional design concepts that make it work to some degree with enthusiasm and hope that pure fandom ends up making a working Enterprise that at least looks similar at some point in the future even if only for a show and not for function.

The way you taunted NBC is so Adam Ragusea I love it

3:30 once again I am delighted by the segue into the sponsor message .. your videos are one of the few where I typically do not skip past the sponsor message.

I feel like this is the most well and satisfyingly structured video (the end is epic) and maybe overall my favorite video you ever did.

I can certainly feel the passion behind this video. Well done!

oh man, I've eaten a few space Neapolitan slices lol they were creamy and tasty, a bit weird, but being told it was space food made it desirable.

Your segues into your sponsors are always on point, sir.

I like to play a game where i try to guess the ad is coming a few seconds before it does. I lost this time. Smooth af. Just like your coffee from trade.

that coffee ad transition was smooth, ngl.

Great video, I enjoyed the creative licence you took, seemed like you had fun with this one!

Thank you for the Enlightenment and Education, Adam. And the dedication note at the end even made me salute. Greetings from Cologne, Germany.

6:57 EarthBound

this videos is great, the timing is crazy since i was just at the air and space museum today and contemplated getting the freeze dried ice-cream sandwiches

The Soviets didn't just switch to pens, they switched to Fischer's space pen the moment that Fischer could legally export it to them.

Progress and optimism! Now I hope you do a video on home freeze drying!

That was *such* a smooth transition to sponsor.

Adam wearing the NASA meatball T-shirt is too meta for me to even handle.

This video feels even prettier than usual! Nice job!

the man always gets a smart way to promote his sponsors

my favorite astronaught interview is the guy who forgot how gravity works when he came home and kept dropping visual aids because he was use to them floating

This was a surprisingly heartwarming episode haha

I feel like I've heard you reference Star Trek before but I had no idea the love was that deep! I think knowing that makes your positive perspective on human progress make so much sense, and as a fellow fan I gotta say, I sincerely appreciate that ☺️ I love that a cooking channel can be about so much more than just cooking 🤗 you keep doing you Adam, and I'll keep tuning in to see what happens next in the Ragusea-verse!

I absolutely loved this video, thank you! And what you said at the end was perfect!

Dang, just found your channel and I got to say i love the hopefull optimistic attitude you seem to raidate about the future, and the honor and respect you give the past!

Pikes jambalaya on today's episode looked amazing

Damn, I would like to try that stuff. I didn't even know, freeze dried ice cream existed!

3:22 this is BY FAR THE BEST segue I have ever seen in a video - you switched topics with a common link not once, but TWICE, and I did not see that sponsorship message coming

What an awesome quality video, I enjoy your stuff soo much! Thanks Adam!

7:43 Astronauts not being able to eat ice cream in space is truly the biggest tragedy of the century

If you ever want to nerd out more about food in space Adam, I used to lead a project at Arizona State University that worked on how to make better space food, and how to make the experience of eating in space more enjoyable given things like the limitations on your sense of taste that you touched on in the video! And it has real world applications here on Earth for people with swallowing disorders, and degenerative conditions that can affect the sense of smell like Parkinson's.

My grand grandfather worked in Military Space Academy, and I remember those teeny-tiny breads in vacuum sealed pack that he showed me once. They were in use for some time in soviet space programmes. And now I work in planetarium and we had soups and cake in tubes (they don’t have tubes in space now). But cake was really nice.

Ive never been so happy to have crumbs fall on the floor instead of float into my eyes

Bit of a fun fact about the Space pen. Not only did both use a pen, they used the exact same pens, produced by the same company in the same factory.

4:54 brilliant reducing weight of water that you have to take with you anyway to rehydrate/compensate for less moisture in food. edit: guess if i watched entire video before commenting.

Adam, as someone who went to IU you missed out on a great museum at the National Museum of the US Airforce. Only 3 hours away from Bloomington located in Dayton Ohio and is insanely impressive in size and collection, you owe yourself a visit next time you are in the area.

that had to be among the smoothest transitions to a sponsor ive ever seen, lol! great video as usual, Adam.

Always love these niche bits of food journalism

Hey Adam, love the videos. But we routinely send ice cream (ben and Jerry's has sponsored) up with most of our missions. There has even been pizza (Pizza Hut sponsored) delivered and a birthday cake for the crew. They have an espresso/coffee maker. They even have a microgravity oven now, and the first cookie was the Hilton Doubletree chocolate chip cookie.

In my opinion, this is the cutest video you've ever made. I know "cute" can be a dismissive term. But I absolutely don't mean it that way. I've learned a lot and you spoke with passion. Very nicely done.

to me as a non-american this feels so new that this thing is associated with space food at all

Damnit Ragusea, you aren't supposed to make me cry at the the end. And thank you.

Heston Blumnethal did a thing about astronaut food. Apparently the rule about bread was because an early astronaut took up a sandwich with a very flaky/crusty type of bread. They then rather over reacted when making the rule, and most bread is fine. It's probably not very efficient volume wise though.

Real space food still looks way better than my desperate summer diet…

You have my respect for dedicating this to the crews of Challenger and Columbia. I will add Apollo 1, and also Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 to that list.

that ad transition was so seamless i didnt even skip it out of appreciation

I remember visiting the US for the first time in 2013. Made a beeline for the Smithsonian air & space museum. They had that massive Enterprise model in the gift shop! Picked up one of those gold emergency space blankets, the pens were ridiculously expensive & I wasn't in zero G so didn't touch those. Wonderful place

Hey Adam, be sure to check out the Udvar Hazy Air and Space museum next time you're in that area. It's also part of the Smithsonian like the one you've been to. I personally think it's the better of the two museums.

That was the smoothest ad transition I have ever seen!

Gotta love that typical dad smile at the end

0:31 nah bro thats wolf brand 💀

7:14 Dude, Atlantis is the best Space Shuttle, change my mind.

I think this was your slickest and most on topic sponsor segue😂 loved it

Bro that was the smoothest transition to a sponsor plug of all time

Space Icecream is real space food. If you brought a Neapolitan icecream sandwich to space, and held it like that astronaut did in the image on the front of the packaging, then brought it somewhere you wouldn't explosively decompress to eat it... It would taste about the same.

God I just love the way Adam transitions into ads, always find it so funny 😂

Astronaut ice-cream is probably what you would get if you opened some ice cream in space.

That segue into your Trade spot was the smoothest thing ever seen in my life

I find it so very weird how little of this made its way into Canada. Very cool to learn a tidbit about American culture that I didn't know before. 6:20 Could this be why I tend to like highly spiced and/or bold flavors in my foods. Subtler flavors seem lost on me. I do have terrible sinuses, so my sense of smell is very dull. That said, ice cream is a food that I always found particularly enjoyable as a food with a strong flavor.

4:48 time link for coffe haters

That transition to the sponsor spot was... spot on!

Smoothest transition into in-video ad ever!

I am immeasurably saddened and my day is ruined. Thanks, Adam. This was really neat to relearn and the proceeding was a joke.