Difference between revisions of "NASA Spoon-bowl"

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As space missions became more ambitious, with extended flight times and maneuvers of increasing complexity, astronauts needed provisions of energy, fat, protein, minerals and vitamins to be more carefully considered. Food allowances for the Gemini missions stipulated 1.7 lb/man/day, 110 in (cubed)/man/day.  This space/weight requirement <i>included</i> the multilayered packaging designed to withstand extreme temperatures, pressures, accelerations and vibratory conditions.
 
As space missions became more ambitious, with extended flight times and maneuvers of increasing complexity, astronauts needed provisions of energy, fat, protein, minerals and vitamins to be more carefully considered. Food allowances for the Gemini missions stipulated 1.7 lb/man/day, 110 in (cubed)/man/day.  This space/weight requirement <i>included</i> the multilayered packaging designed to withstand extreme temperatures, pressures, accelerations and vibratory conditions.
  
===Food Rejection===
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===Food Acceptance===
  
 
[[File: Changes in Weight Apollo.jpg|frame|Crew members suffered dramatic weight loss during flights. Smith and Berry, 42.]]
 
[[File: Changes in Weight Apollo.jpg|frame|Crew members suffered dramatic weight loss during flights. Smith and Berry, 42.]]
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[[File: Beef Hash Apollo 11.jpg|frame|Beef hash in a NASA spoon-bowl prepared for the Apollo 11 flight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.]]
 
[[File: Beef Hash Apollo 11.jpg|frame|Beef hash in a NASA spoon-bowl prepared for the Apollo 11 flight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.]]
 
  
 
After the morale-boosting success of spoon use on Apollo 8, NASA engineered and introduced the spoon-bowl package for the Apollo 10 mission (1969), which incorporated the regular use of a spoon for eating hydrated foods. The flexible package – referred to as a wetpack or thermostabilized flexible pouch - featured a rehydration valve at the bottom and a large “plastic-zippered opening” at the top. The new container had the major advantage of being able to hold meals with large chunks of meat and vegetables, instead of the former pastes and compressed powders (Johnston et al, [?])   
 
After the morale-boosting success of spoon use on Apollo 8, NASA engineered and introduced the spoon-bowl package for the Apollo 10 mission (1969), which incorporated the regular use of a spoon for eating hydrated foods. The flexible package – referred to as a wetpack or thermostabilized flexible pouch - featured a rehydration valve at the bottom and a large “plastic-zippered opening” at the top. The new container had the major advantage of being able to hold meals with large chunks of meat and vegetables, instead of the former pastes and compressed powders (Johnston et al, [?])   
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</blockquote>
  
The Administration considered the design a success, and astronauts relished the chance to eat meals that were both warm (from reconstitution water) and textured. Americans watched astronauts happily demonstrate the spoon-bowl by video broadcast from the Apollo 11 mission: “Can you believe you’re looking at chicken stew?”(http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/gallery/video/apollo/apollo11/mpg/apollo11_dlclip03.mpg) While new ‘normal’ eating procedures emerged and astronauts showed enthusiasm,  
+
The Administration considered the design a success, and astronauts relished the chance to eat meals that were both warm (from reconstitution water) and textured. Americans watched astronauts happily demonstrate the spoon-bowl by video broadcast from the Apollo 11 mission: “Can you believe you’re looking at chicken stew?”(http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/gallery/video/apollo/apollo11/mpg/apollo11_dlclip03.mpg) While new ‘normal’ eating procedures emerged and astronauts showed enthusiasm, the design had limitations: using a utensil required the use of both hands, only one dish could be handled at a time, and all proved to be time consuming. The spoon-bowl as a primary form of packaging didn’t last beyond the Apollo missions.
 +
 
 +
=The End of the Race=
  
 +
==Soviet Collaboration==
  
 
=Works Consulted=
 
=Works Consulted=

Revision as of 00:09, 18 October 2010

On December 24, 1968, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders broadcast a message to the American public from Apollo 8: “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth" (Cortright, 1975). The three men, perhaps longing just a little more than usual for the comforts of home on Christmas Eve, then opened their thermostabilized flexible cans of turkey chunks and gravy and had their dinner.

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Compressed and dehydrated peaches for the Apollo 11 flight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The meal was a special gift from NASA – no rehydration required – a sacrifice of precious space and weight on the shuttle. And, despite worries that eating from an open container could contaminate their delicate environment, the men were given spoons to eat with. It was the first time astronauts had used an eating utensil in outer space and it marked the beginning of a major NASA food system redesign that made concessions for social human behavior.

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Stainless steel spoon belonging to Command Module Pilot Michael Collins for use on the Apollo 11 space mission, July 1969. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The Spoon-bowl, a package designed for use on Apollo flights 9 through 14 allowed astronauts to dip spoons into flexible ‘bowls’ that contained rehydrated foods. The innovation was a nuisance for NASA nutritionists and food designers; a precisely engineered food system had been in place since the Mercury missions (1959-1963). But male anorexia became a chronic problem as flights grew longer and Astronaut’s interest in their meals all but stopped. The simple act of eating with a spoon, from a bowl, became a key component of maintaining the astronaut's psychological fabric during the years of the Apollo missions.

The Space Race and National Identity

By 1968, when Borman, Lovell and Anders enjoyed their Christmas meal, America and Russia had been embroiled in the Space Race for over a decade. Early Soviet success with space flight pushed the United States to declare a race to the Moon - a finish line to which they sprinted. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the U.S. space program provided a platform upon which Americans could negotiate national identity within the larger context of safety, boundaries, and power.

And as humans broke free from the pull of our planet’s gravity, the concept of space – ‘Space’ – took on new forms and meanings. Arthur C. Clarke, inventor and fiction writer of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame, wrote that “we have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars” (Clarke, 114). Communication technology had pulled people and countries tightly together; geographic expanses of Earth and the universe beyond contrasted ever more sharply. With unquantifiable amounts of Outer Space to be had, then, how could the Russian space program feel so close?

Despite the unimaginable limitlessness of outer space, the threat of the Soviet Union (and all of the dangers ascribed to it, including Communism and nuclear Armageddon) maintained intensity through media reports and propaganda. Invasion of the American airspace by Russian forces was already deeply planted in the national consciousness; fear of their symbolic claim to Space-in-general had dangerous implications. As the two nations symbolically conquered the Universe with every aeronautical achievement, the media eagerly relayed the competition between adversaries. While Clarke regarded communication technology as the great negator of geography, the threat of invasion created a psychological closeness that could not be diffused by any amount of space.

To combat the threat of physical, social, and political contamination by the Soviet Union, the United States constructed elaborate systems of barriers that could both keep out the unwanted as well as maintain the integrity of the interior. At the national level, the popular media created a distinctly American space program. TIME magazine, under contract with NASA for exclusive rights to report on the private lives of the Astronauts, provided the American public with an image of the space program that was clean-scrubbed, modern an morally upright (Salo, 2). The carefully built persona of the entire program was formally mediated and structured through contracts and constructed stories (new ending for this sentence needed). NASA designed the space program in the context of attitudes that braced against invasion and contamination – an idea that translated into the design of the smallest items for space travel, and is perhaps most profoundly visible in the packaging of food.

Space Food (Pre) History

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Rendering of an ‘asteroid space ship’ created with the remains of a planet. Finkelstein and Taylor, 2.

Before sending the first man into space in 1959, debates between nutritionists, food technologists and NASA officials nervously predicted the dangers of eating in space. Would astronauts choke when swallowing in zero gravity? Could stray crumbs and juice droplets cause pneumonia if breathed in? Could edible food even withstand the extreme temperatures and pressure of space travel? Without the stabilizing forces of gravity, scientists worried that Astronauts – literally off-kilter – faced dire ends if food contaminated the environment that NASA took pains to sterilize. [where did you get this? Find your source]

With so many unknown factors, the food systems designed for space travel developed tentatively, improving slowly over the course of the earliest American Space missions, Mercury (1959-1963), Gemini (1963-1966), and Apollo (1961-1972). But even as men were successfully placed into orbit, speculation about nutrition in space and its effects on the human body engendered enormous concern for its design implications. In a 1960 article, “Food, Nutrition, and the Space Traveler,” researchers from the Aerospace Medical Laboratory suggested that long-term space voyages would one-day be possible, and wondered: how could we fit enough food into the shuttle?

The authors figured that the average human consumes approximately 550 pounds of oxygen per year, nearly one ton of liquids, and over 2,500 pounds of food. And then there’s the packaging, the storage…it would be impossible to achieve the velocity required for the shuttle to escape the earth’s gravitational force. [add her illustration of the asteroid ship] In other words, the technology for long-term travel was foreseeable. But they puzzled over the problem of keeping humans fed (and by extension, alive).

Despite ambitious notions of long-term food regeneration, early NASA nutrition reports more importantly recognized that food has deep psychological value – words like “acceptability” often surface in discussions on food design. It is one of the few acts of mankind in space from which he can derive the pleasures of home (Finkelstein, 796). But – the use of utensils would not be possible. For example:

A number of interesting phenomena would occur when ordinary methods of eating and drinking are employed in a space ship in a state of weightlessness. If a piece of meat should slip while being cut, it would fly off the plate and splatter against the wall, bounce back and then continue to bounce back and forth off the walls, ceiling and floor. A fork full of peas raised to the mouth would continue in its upward flight to the ceiling and be reflected back, bombarding like buckshot. A cup of coffee raised to the mouth would result in the astronaut’s receiving the contents in his face (Finkelstein, 797).

Engineering Food, Engineering People

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Self-contained fecal waste unit from Apollo 11 mission. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Understanding food design in a closed environment, however, requires a look at the full nutritional circuit. For all input, there is output, and NASA nutritionists worried that foods incompatible with gastrointestinal functions would contaminate the shuttle with fecal matter. Food selection gave special attention to items that helped generate optimal waste:

Foods that were relatively bland and unseasoned; food that would not result in generation of noticeable quantities of gastrointestinal gas and flatus; foods that were completely digestible an readily absorbed in the small intestines; and foods that would result in feces of normal consistency, but that would cause minimal frequency and mass of defecations (Smith et al, 6).

Natural human function presented a critical problem for space travel. Food was too messy; waste was too unpredictable. The confines of the shuttle were overwhelmingly limited, and even a fart disturbed the perfect mechanization of space travel. Containment thus became the cornerstone of food design: compactness, structural integrity, and density within systematic layers of plastic and foil. The Astronaut’s nutritional needs threatened the function of the machine, and so required the mechanization of the body and its fuel.

Conflict between the natural and the synthetic permeated contemporary discourse on design, notably in reference to the Machine Age, and technological advancements in food production prompted further thought on human nutritional requirement. The early NASA food system inspired further prediction on the benefits of synthetic diets, often discussed in the context of contamination and the containment of germs. Science writer Robert Prehoda in his ambitious Designing the Future (1967) believed that the engineering of food would help scientists create a ‘closed-cycle’ system in which waste could be broken down into reusable components. With virtually no fecal output, “germ-free explorers would not contaminate alien worlds” (Prehoda, 209).

The Human Problem

Although NASA scientists successfully engineered nutritionally optimal food items, they soon discovered the problem of human agency. As Dr. Malcom Smith, Chief of Food and Nutrition at NASA reported in a 1969 article for Nutrition Today, “Until recently, machines presented most of our problems. But now our machines are functioning flawlessly. The problems now emerging are human” (Smith, 37) While Smith declared human problem relative to the act of eating – “progress toward extended extraterrestrial exploration may be no faster than our progress with the problems of advanced food technology” (Ibid) – he could have just as easily been speaking about the space missions as a whole.

As the Astronaut’s role of romanticized explorer (the longtime trope of the American pioneer) faded from the spotlight and gave way to media showcases of technological achievement, so did their celebrated cult of personality. LIFE magazine’s Space Race coverage shifted from private lives to national ‘firsts,’ and in doing so, the Astronauts became increasingly faceless, interchangeable, and ultimately industrialized (Salo, 36).

Documents prepared by the NASA team addressing issues of food system re-design echo the annoyances caused by personality. Each man in space had likes, dislikes, quirks. But the astronauts had been selected because they were super men; men that could both mentally and physically withstand the unknown extraterrestrial environment. In 1959, the American people watched with fascination as the space program whittled hopefuls down from 110 to the seven Mercury astronauts that would “ride the first manned satellites out of a ballistic missile blasted 125 miles into the sky” (Witkin). They underwent testing that proved their resistance to extreme stress, temperatures, acceleration and confusion. They pondered the question, “Who am I?” They were as super as humans could be. Fissures between the human and the machine appeared as quickly as technology progressed.

Nutrition and the Psyche

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Beef with vegetables issued to astronaut John Glenn on the Friendship 7 Mercury mission. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

NASA’s attention to “food acceptance” engendered extensive research that tested how the human psyche reacted to combinations of nutrition, confinement, and sensory deprivation. In short, they studied how people ate in the absence of ‘culture.’ In October of 1964, four male college students received $1,000 each from the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories for participating in a study that measured their reaction to six weeks of “freeze dehydrated foods.” They spent 28 days in a capsule made to simulate spacecraft and an additional 14 in confinement, during which they could not change clothes, brush teeth, or bathe. They were declared “no worse for the wear.” The test subjects proved that, yes, one could survive on “astronaut food.” Yet, when astronauts went up into space they often exhibited signs of anorexia, leading to dangerous loss of body mass (not to mention a threat to the decidedly masculine image of the space program).

Scientists measured the success of the food program after each flight by noting the total quantity consumed, post-flight crew feedback, and changes in their body weight. But they understood that the data was flawed. Crewmembers often traded meals (and neglected to record them) according to preference. One report on the Apollo food program, reveals that a mission 7 Astronaut tried unsuccessfully to trade his crewmate his entire meal for a single serving of freeze-dried tuna. Scientists began to understand that “our intensive efforts to portion and balance in-flight nutrients are of little value if the food is not eaten.” Focus shifted from nutrient content to psychological acceptance – feelings of desire and pleasure complicated scientific engineering.

The Gemini, Mercury and Apollo Food Systems

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The complex organizational support system for the Apollo food system. Smith et al, 4.

Considerations put forward by the NASA nutritionists for food development emphasize their struggle to reconcile nutrition and culture in a highly systematized program. Not only did they focus on food preservation and stability at a molecular level, they also recognized that, “food habits and prejudices are highly individualized and deeply ingrained in the tastes of the intended consumers (the astronauts) and the interested nonconsumers (the program, system, and subsystem managers) (Smith et al, 1).” While the integration of personal preference within the food system actualized, the engineers interestingly diffused focus on the astronauts. The products of desire extended across the whole Administration, from management to shuttle operator, and in doing so, the cult of personality remained in its neutralized state.

Tubes and Cubes

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Dehydtrated foods in packages designed for Gemini missions in 1965-66. Bourland, 2.

The foods against which Gemini and Apollo astronauts rebelled were heavily reliant on the freeze dehydration process, favored for its ability to maintain the original food’s color, flavor, and nutrient content (Richard, ?) Particularly during the Gemini space program, food designers faced stringent space and weight requirements. Freeze dried food is compact, lightweight, and could take advantage of the potable water created as a byproduct of the oxygen-making process onboard. Utilizing this technology, early in-flight food fell under one of three categories:

  1. bite-sized cubes
  2. freeze-dried foods
  3. semi-liquids in aluminum tubes (Space Food and Nutrition, 2)

Each was specifically engineered to prevent the food from contaminating the shuttle environment. Aluminum coated tubes, similar those used for toothpaste packaging, could be punctured with a straw for sucking out the semi-liquid contained and pushed out by squeezing from the bottom. Compacted cubes – solid foods that were compressed and coated with gelatin to prevent stray crumbs – were “vacuum packed into individual serving-sized containers of clear, four-ply, laminated plastic film for storage” (Space Food and Nutrition, 2). Astronauts were expected to provide their own rehydration in the form of saliva to make them edible. In both cases, the multiple package layers and the heavy aluminum often weighed more than the actual food (Ibid).

As space missions became more ambitious, with extended flight times and maneuvers of increasing complexity, astronauts needed provisions of energy, fat, protein, minerals and vitamins to be more carefully considered. Food allowances for the Gemini missions stipulated 1.7 lb/man/day, 110 in (cubed)/man/day. This space/weight requirement included the multilayered packaging designed to withstand extreme temperatures, pressures, accelerations and vibratory conditions.

Food Acceptance

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Crew members suffered dramatic weight loss during flights. Smith and Berry, 42.

Despite nutritional density, NASA scientists soon discovered major flaws in the food design. The process of rehydrating meals, known as reconstitution, cost astronauts excessive time and energy – some as long as 30 minutes. That, and it didn’t taste very good. (Or, as Apollo Experience Report authors put it, “a hard, compressed cube made of toasted breadcrumbs held together by a starch-gelatin matrix and coating does not taste like a conventional slice of toasted bread.”)

Observations of the Apollo 7, 8, and 9 missions showed very low food acceptance rates and prompted renewed efforts towards system redevelopment that aimed to address five key issues:

  1. Inadequate food intake
  2. Anorexia and nausea, food being a contributing factor
  3. Meal preparation and eating very time consuming
  4. Water for food rehydration unpalatable and “contained undesirable amounts of dissolved gasses”
  5. Malfunction of rehydratable food packages (Johnston et al, [?])

NASA Spoon-bowl

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Beef hash in a NASA spoon-bowl prepared for the Apollo 11 flight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

After the morale-boosting success of spoon use on Apollo 8, NASA engineered and introduced the spoon-bowl package for the Apollo 10 mission (1969), which incorporated the regular use of a spoon for eating hydrated foods. The flexible package – referred to as a wetpack or thermostabilized flexible pouch - featured a rehydration valve at the bottom and a large “plastic-zippered opening” at the top. The new container had the major advantage of being able to hold meals with large chunks of meat and vegetables, instead of the former pastes and compressed powders (Johnston et al, [?])

The pouch – not really a bowl in the conventional sense – sealed at the top and featured an extension at the bottom for a rehydration valve. Using hot or cold water from a tap in the shuttle, the astronauts then kneaded the package to re-incorporate moisture. When fully reconstituted, they clipped off the top with a pair of scissors and ate with a standard issue spoon. The fairly straightforward design concept required complex manufacture.

Design and Functionality

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Meal package for Apollo 11 flight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Food system designers created the spoon-bowl with specific considerations, including substantial protective packaging, easy identification methods, reliable functionality and lightweight low-volume forms. (Smith et al, 7). Meal portions had to be modular, discrete, but also part of a cohesive whole – the meal a seamless unit comprised of many smaller items.

Complex manufacturing systems for both the packages and the meals within focused on safety, ensuring that food remained ‘safe’ from contaminates. NASA closely observed food assembly workers and noted their “motivation, teamwork, medial examinations…[and] clothing control”; packaging environments monitored for sanitation schedules, air filtration, differential air pressures, and temperature control (Smith et al, 9). Food and package production in sterilized environments guaranteed safety on Earth, but the threat of contamination continued up in space. Spoon-bowl designers explained how the package could minimize the loss of food, even with an open container:

The cut flap is held out of the way by mating Velcro patches on the flap and body of the package. Two parallel plastic zippers are incorporated at the top of the package. The use of two zippers effect a stronger temporary closure, and the lower zipper also serves as a place where excess food can be scraped off the spoon during consumption. Both zippers may be used for temporary reclosure of the package during the mealtime and for final closure after eating, before stowage of the used package with any food residue and a germicidal tablet. On each side of the package, a finger/thumb loop is available for use by the crewman for one-handed opening and closing while using the other hand to spoon out the contents in a rather conventional fashion (Smith et al, 26-7).

The Administration considered the design a success, and astronauts relished the chance to eat meals that were both warm (from reconstitution water) and textured. Americans watched astronauts happily demonstrate the spoon-bowl by video broadcast from the Apollo 11 mission: “Can you believe you’re looking at chicken stew?”(http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/gallery/video/apollo/apollo11/mpg/apollo11_dlclip03.mpg) While new ‘normal’ eating procedures emerged and astronauts showed enthusiasm, the design had limitations: using a utensil required the use of both hands, only one dish could be handled at a time, and all proved to be time consuming. The spoon-bowl as a primary form of packaging didn’t last beyond the Apollo missions.

The End of the Race

Soviet Collaboration

Works Consulted

“4 Live for 6 Weeks on Astronaut Diet.” New York Times (Nov. 27, 1964): 69.

“Astronaut Carpenter Could Take Box Lunch.” The Science News-Letter, vol. 81, no. 23 (Jun. 9, 1962): 354.

Bourland, Charles T. “Space Food Packaging Facts.” NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center, Iowa State University (Nov., 2002).

Bourland, Charles T. “The development of food systems for space.” Trends in Food Science & Technology, vol. 4 (Sept., 1993): 271-276.

Bustead, R. L. and J. M. Tuomey. “Food Quality Design for Gemini and Apollo Space Programs.” Report presented at Technical Conference Transactions, New York, NY, 1966.

Clarke, Arthur C. Profiles of the Future: an inquiry into the limits of the possible. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

Cortright, Edgar M., ed. Apollo Expeditions to the Moon. Washington, D.C. : Scientific and Technical Information Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1975.

Despaul, John E. “Tomorrow’s Dinner.” The Science News-Letter, vol. 74, no. 11 (Sept. 13, 1958): 170-171.

Finkelstein, Beatrice and Albert A. Taylor. “Food, Nutrition and the Space Traveler.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 8 (Nov./Dec., 1960): 793-800.

Freivalds, John. “Bringing Space down to Earth: Space Age Technology Transfer and the Developing Countries.” The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 8, no. 1 (Oct., 1973): 83-92.

Heidelbaugh, N. D., et al. “Microbiological Testing of Skylab Foods.” Applied Microbiology, vol. 25, no. 1 (Jan., 1973): 55-61.

Johnston, Richard S., et al. Biomedical Results of Apollo. Washington, D.C.: Scientific and Technical Information Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1975.

Lane, Helen W. and Dale A. Schoeller, ed. Nutrition in Spaceflight and Weightlessness Models. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1999.

Lay, Frances I. “Next Stop: Outer Space.” The American Journal of Nursing, vol. 59, no. 7 (July, 1959): 971-973.

“Pie in the Sky: Astronaut Diet?” The Science News-Letter, vol. 86, no. 6 (Aug. 8, 1964): 84.

“Problems of Weightlessness.” The Science News-Letter, vol. 81, no. 6 (Feb. 10, 1962): 90-91.

Salo, Edward George. “”Some People Call me a Space Cowboy: the image of the astronaut in Life Magazine, 1959 – 1972.” Master’s thesis. Middle Tennessee State University, 1998.

Smith, Malcom C., et al. “Apollo Experience Report – Food Systems.” Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, July, 1974.

Smith, Malcom C. and Charles A. Berry. “Dinner on the Moon.” Nutrition Today (Autumn, 1969): 37-42.

Sherrod, Robert. “The Selling of the Astronauts.” Columbia Journalism Review (May/June, 1973): 16-25.

“Space Fliers Underwent Rigid Tests Before Selection.” New York Times (Apr. 10, 1959): 3.

Taylor, Albert A. and Beatrice Finkelstein. “Preventative Medicine Aspects of Flight Feeding.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 48, no. 5 (May, 1958): 604-609.

Witkin, Richard. “110 Selected as Potential Pilots For Nation’s First Space Flight.” NYT (Jan. 28, 1959).