Libby Jackson interview for Heston's Dinner in Space

9 March 2016

Can you give an insight into what your job is?

I work for the UK Space Agency. I currently manage the UK’s education and outreach programme for Tim Peake’s mission. Before that, I was a Flight Director for the Columbus Module, which is the European part of the Space Station. I’ve been working alongside Tim ever since he was selected; helping train him in some of his duties and I’ve been working in human space flight for nine years.

What’s Heston’s Dinner in Space all about?

All European Space Agency astronauts on the ISS get to take some bonus foods along with them. Their regular meals have mostly been developed by the NASA Food Lab, or by the Russians. But astronauts get seven large shoe-boxes-worth of bonus food. The idea is that you can bring along treats and things that you miss from home. The European Space Agency likes to provide some special meals for their astronauts. So Tim has been asked a number of times what special meals he’d like to take, and he’s always suggested that schoolchildren should choose for him. But those ideas need to be turned into something, so we needed a chef. We approached Heston, because he’s known for his fantastic way of looking at things – it’s not just food, he looks at the chemistry behind it, and the textures and so on. So Heston took some of the children’s ideas, and took other ideas as well, taking inspiration form Tim and his experiences. So he developed seven dishes for Tim to eat in space. The documentary follows the story of how that all happened, how you rise to the challenge of developing food to eat on the International Space Station.

Have you eaten much space food?

I’ve eaten some, yes. People think space food is massively different from what we eat, but really it’s just dehydrated long life shelf food. We have to make sure that the meals are balanced, and the astronauts are getting all the nutrients they need, but the food itself, at least the tinned, long life variety, is exactly the same as what we walk into the supermarket to buy. It’s very similar to the foil pouches people take camping. The difference is the dehydrated stuff. Because weight is such an issue, and all the water on board ISS is recycled, a lot of the food is sent up in this dehydrated form and you rehydrate it. It’s a bit like instant mashed potato. I’ve tried the food over the years, it isn’t as different as you might think.

What are the technical challenges that Heston will have faced in creating food for the ISS?

When we set out on this process – and I’ve been looking after the project for the space agency the whole way through – one of the biggest things we had to think about was how to make it – there are different ways to turn food into long life food. Should we dry it, should we tin it? In the end, we decided to go with a company in France that does canning on a small scale. Because one of the challenges is we were doing very small batches, sometimes as little as 200 cans. And to make food last in a can for years, you have to heat it to 240°C, and that changes the texture and flavour of food. That’s why a lot of tinned food is bland. That’s where Heston and his team were superb. They examined how they could make sure the end product was tasty and interesting and full of colour and not grey and bland at the end of the process. So they looked at different cuts of meat they could use, at spices and so on. So, for example, with a beef stew, rather than just take a normal cut of beef, what are the harder cuts that you normally wouldn’t go near, but that can withstand that process and produce something that’s really lovely at the end. So they thought about it chemically, how food changed, and came up with some very good solutions.

There are fairly stringent regulations you have to adhere to with the food, aren’t there?

Yes. For example, food can’t be at all crumbly. When you are eating in a weightless environment, if you have crumbs they will fly out everywhere and can wreak havoc with equipment. Nutritional values are carefully monitored, you’ve got to make sure that the bacteria are right –the food underwent a lot of testing to make sure that it was safe.

Do astronauts struggle with the food they have to eat? Is it a common complaint?

It’s improved significantly over the 60 years that we’ve been doing space travel. Back in the early days, no-one appreciated how important food was. They were packaging protein cubes, it was just seen as a source of fuel. But now that people are spending six months in space, food takes on the significance it has here on earth. It is a pleasurable thing, and it has a social function. Astronaut food isn’t great, and it’s been a bit of a running joke, there’s only so much rehydrated spinach that’s going to be exciting for you. Astronauts are always excited by attempts to find ways to make their food more interesting. They only get fresh fruit and vegetables once every few months when the cargo ship arrives.

That must be an enormous thrill to them – just getting an orange!

Exactly! The smell of that just connects you back to Earth. You’re in this environment, the ISS is noisy and smelly, there’s no fresh air, they’re only just starting to grow plants, you’ve not seen anything living. And to suddenly get those things is hugely important for them. And your sense of taste and smell is affected by weightlessness, so astronauts often report that they like extra spicy things. The Russians tend to like a lot of garlic, and the Americans go for a lot of chilli in their food.

Do the astronauts on the ISS eat together, and do they eat the same food at the same time?

It really varies. The best way I can describe it is, if you’ve got six people living in a house together, sometimes you’ll come together and sometimes you’ll do your own thing. They have a schedule every day, and there’s an hour scheduled for lunch. The planners try and arrange that all six astronauts have the same time off. But just as with any job, sometimes you’ll have to work a bit longer, or you’ll eat at your desk or whatever. It’s the same in the evenings. Sometimes they’ll all gather round the table and have a special meal. Tim’s taken Heston’s food, and they’ve all had some of that.

So Tim’s taken enough to share?

Oh yeah, there’s about 40 cans of each of the dishes up there, so there’s plenty enough for everyone to have some. And at other meals, someone will feel like chicken ad someone else will want spaghetti Bolognese, so they’ll eat their own thing.

You’ve tasted Heston’s space food. What was it like?

It's superb! I don’t eat a lot of tinned food here on earth – I don’t think many of us do, willingly. It’s just not that exciting. But this was really very delicious. There’s something called Operation Raleigh, a salmon dish, which is fantastic. There’s a stewed apple with caramel one, it’s absolutely divine, you’d never believe it came out of a tin. One of them, Sausage Sizzle, is based on a favourite meal Tim’s family used to make when they went out camping, and has beautiful caramelised onions, it’s lovely. There’s a Thai chicken curry that packs a serious kick, beef stew, which is serious gourmet dining stuff – it’s really rich, you wouldn’t have it every day for dinner. There’s a bacon sandwich, which is genius – that’s a real taste of earth, because you never get sandwiches in space. They found the right bread that wouldn’t crumble, the right cuts of pork – it’s like a biscuit-sized bacon sandwich in a tin. Then there’s some lime curd that you chill and put on a cracker. If you did a taste test of this tinned food compared to any other tinned food, hands down this is the best tinned food I’ve ever had. And I spoke to another astronaut who tried it when Heston visited the control centre in Munich, and he said it was by far and away the best space food he’d ever had.

Do you think the fruits of Heston’s labours will have an effect on space food in years to come?

Yeah, I hope so. The European Space Agency have seen that it’s good stuff, so we’ll see what comes of it. It’s set the bar. But this is still in the bonus food realm – you can’t send everything up in tins, it’s so much heavier because of the water content. It can’t take over everything. But as a special set of foods, something to look forward to, a celebratory meal, it does the job superbly. It’s shown what can be done, and that’s a good thing.

Obviously Tim is massive news at the moment – you must be very busy, and absolutely thrilled by what’s going on up there.

It’s been non-stop. We worked very hard in the two years leading up to launch, and we knew that this would be exciting. But it’s so wonderful to see how much the country has engaged, and how the young generation are getting it and are getting excited about it. Because that’s what Tim has wanted from day one. My job is making sure we’ve got a good education programme so we can capitalise on this and see the importance of science and engineering, and get excited by it. We want children to be inspired to get into these areas in the future. It’s been wonderful to see. It makes me smile every time Tim posts something, with the responses he gets from teachers and pupils. And he’s having such a wonderful time up there. He’s such a nice guy, we are absolutely thrilled.