Why Don't Astronauts Snore in Space?

May 19, 2009— -- Sure, the views are great, weightlessness is fun and saving the Hubble Space Telescope is noble work. But even an astronaut in space on the mission of a lifetime has to eat and sleep.

Did you know that astronauts don't snore in space? More on that later.

This group of astronauts didn't go into space without chocolate, pudding, biscotti and coffee. Perhaps by the time the United States returns to the Moon, someone will figure out how to get another essential food into orbit: Pizza.

Mike Massimino, one of the four spacewalkers on this week's mission, said, "It is impossible in space; we don't have it, someone would get a Nobel Prize if they can figure out how to get pizza in space."

The crew of Atlantis had to pick food for breakfast lunch and dinner for 12 days. Cmd. Scott Altman said it isn't easy to figure out what you want to eat that far in advance.

"That was one of the most stressful things about preparing for the flight, was figuring out a menu for 12 days; what do I want to eat? I came up with three days and just repeated it four times," he said.

So he did. He is eating Mexican scrambled eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, with coffee most days, and the shrimp cocktail and barbecue beef brisket for dinner most nights, with a responsible serving of fruits and veggies on most days.

Altman started the two years of training for the mission by telling his crew he would ban any fish on the mission.

Why fish? The garbage container on space shuttles is below the floor on the mid-deck, and fish, well, smells after awhile. Altman did relent and allow spacewalker John Grunsfeld to add salmon to his menu, as long as he ate it all.

Grunsfeld says the must-have menu for any space shuttle flight is candy-coated peanuts (aka M&M's).

"The first thing to know about space food, it is the ambiance, it is the environment, it is not the food," he said. "These candies come in a piece of plastic, we cut them open, and suddenly everyone starts behaving like fish in a fish tank. That is fun food."