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space cheese

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jackgraham jackgraham's picture
space cheese
I went searching for whether anyone's made cheese in orbit yet, and instead found this piece about Vermont cheesemakers launching cheese balloons into the upper atmosphere. http://www.wcax.com/story/19036815/cheesemakers-in-vermont-think-big
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nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
They made it to 103,000 feet.
They made it to 103,000 feet. That's not even a third of the way to the edge of space. This article notes that Cosmonauts do regularly bring cheese into space as some of their food stocks: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/lu_letter3.html Articles also note that US astronauts have brought mac and cheese into space, but I think that hardly counts. I didn't dig too deeply into this, but at first appearances it would seem the Russians have beaten us again.
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
Null grav has lots of
Null grav has lots of challenges when it comes to liquids and food making. for example water does not boil without gravity
CodexofRome CodexofRome's picture
But you don't want milk to
But you don't want milk to boil when you're making cheese. You want to heat it (with the rennet) to the right temperature... which ranges from just over 100 degrees to 180ish (IIRC). Then you add the vinegar (or other acid) to curdle the milk. Squeeze out the whey and water, cool (but don't freeze) and wait. All of that would be fairly simple. But you're not going to get exciting cheese out of that process. One of the big factors in cheese production is the addition of various flavor additives and the humidity and temperature of where the cheese cures. A lot of that could be replicated with artificially manufactured enzymes and fragrant molecules. At some point, it's possible you could just print a good Parmesan. Of course... I would image there would be a big market in EP for "real foods" created from the real sources. Brie made from real cows milk... even steaks made from those same cows.
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Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
Yeah, mixing of the rennet
Yeah, mixing of the rennet with milk proteins in microgravity will be your biggest hurdle- the casein could form a shell around the enzyme limiting its effectiveness....that and milking the cow in microgravity would be a huge pain in the ass! :) Oddly, this reminded me of a recent Cracked article http://www.cracked.com/article_21716_5-mind-blowing-artifacts-that-let-y... which featured bog butter- butter buried in peat bogs for preservation thousands of years ago and is still edible! Which is kind of the exact opposite of what you were looking for!
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Holy Holy's picture
ORCACommander wrote:water
ORCACommander wrote:
water does not boil without gravity
??? As far as I know that is not exactly correct. Water will boil with and without gravity, as the boiling point is a function of pressure and temperature; but the water will not mix via density gradients like on earth, therefore heat exchange should be bad, which would very much hinder cooking.
puke puke's picture
not quite sure how this effects cooling systems...
Yeah, heat transfer (or lack thereof) is the thing. Hot water will stay near the heating element, bubbles will form but not rise. It ends up with one large bubble of hot gas around the heater, as the water heats up from the inside out. There are some cool videos of this happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZxNTp05kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgQAuHNgBI Probably creates some fascinating problems for the guys designing phase change radiators.
Holy Holy's picture
puke wrote:
puke wrote:
Probably creates some fascinating problems for the guys designing phase change radiators.
I think forced connection, e.g. pumping, really solves the problem. As far as I know we just rely on 'natural' connection mich more often than one might guess.