Has anyone tried an Astronaut / Space MRE's yet?

[Ruleryak]

I've done a review on these on here as well. The meal I put together was a mix of actual cosmonaut food, and the commercial products (which I explained in the review).

The cottage cheese and pork with vegetables were vending machine SpaceFood products, but the juice, tea and candy were the harder-to-find actual cosmonaut items. It's likely that they were overproduction items or factory seconds that didn't make the cut for whatever reason. At this point nothing current is going to have gone to space. The Soyuz capsules separate into different parts after they've been used to ferry their passengers up to the International Space Station where the US and Russia collaborate on scientific endeavors. One portion is used as a re-entry vehicle to get them back down to the Earth after their mission, and the other portion is essentially used as a dump. Any food that goes bad, along with worn out clothing, broken gear, etc is put in the dump portion and when they're full it gets jettisoned and put into a trajectory that will cause it to burn up against the atmosphere (no extra debris floating around near the space station).

When the shuttle was still the means of getting to and from near Earth orbit, there would be items in the galley on board that would go up, not get eaten, and come back down to Earth. The Ration Museum has one of those meals in the collection so far and is always looking for more with provenance to show that it has indeed been in outer space.

[steve1989]

I gotta get some more Cosmonaught food - last shoot I did got botched and never released. I ate 1 commercial tube or Borscht exactly like the one Gschultz9 reviewed, and 1 authentic Russian Federation Cosmonaught bread loaf (12 mini bite sized loafs) and a tube of peach apple juice.


Next time, I am planning on taking up a notch or two with the variety...along with my knowledge & execution.

You can find the Russian stuff on Ebay - U.S. NASA food is more difficult to acquire and any of those I ever find would never be consumed, rather donated to The Military Ration Museum's growing collection.

[SNiiP3R]

The real Russian space food is mostly in cans and air sealed packets. For instance, this set is the real deal,
These are harder to come by, and usually are very expensive, almost $200 for a set.

[RockyRaab]

When I was a media spokesman for NASA at Kennedy Space Center, reporters often asked to see what space food was like. But even when food was swapped out of the Space Shuttle due to delays, the removed food was destroyed. I could never get any. The Public Affairs folks at Houston could sometimes get some, because that's where the astronaut food labs are and the labs often had prototype foods available.

But actual "meant to launch" foods? No way. I'm positive that the reason for this was the extremely high price such items would fetch on the private market. So they kept it almost as tightly controlled as moon rocks.

[shawker71]

I have a whole bag of moon rocks. I will even sell them cheap, $1000.00 per rock. I guarantee they came back on Apollo 18 with a hand typed and signed (by me) COA. I have all kinds of colors but supplies are definitely limited.

[SNiiP3R]

Here it is, the real deal $350
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Russian-space-f ... 2362201032

[Eistee]

Well at least the shipping is free

[elandil]

Here it is, the real deal $350

If I'm paying that much for a meal, I better see some blonde englishman in the kitchen calling the chefs every name inthe book while i'm waiting on it...

[SNiiP3R]

Here it is, the real deal $350

If I'm paying that much for a meal, I better see some blonde englishman in the kitchen calling the chefs every name inthe book while i'm waiting on it...

The actual price of this ration is around $200 in Russia, of course it depends who you're getting it from. The ebay seller is adding the shipping costs + his own fees.

[Ruleryak]

Here it is, the real deal $350
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Russian-space-f ... 2362201032

Yeah, so the juice in my review is in the 3rd pic on that auction, as is the tea. On the 5th picture you can see the gummy candies I included in that review too. The pork and the cottage cheese were the only commercial civilian products in that one. Steve mentioned trying to do one too - his Borscht was real, but from another source. His bread came from me was also the real deal, and can be seen in the 3rd pic in this auction.

The pictures seem to contradict each other here a bit, but overall it looks like a really great deal. It's got 20 pieces of food, which is a ton if non of it is the commercial stuff. I say it's a bit contradictory because if you add up each unique item between the pictures you're looking at closer to 30 different products there. The first picture has more than 20 items in it, and doesn't have a few of the listed items (which appear mixed in the other pics) so there have to be a handful of items between the pictures that wouldn't actually be included. Again though, I do think it looks like a great set and a good deal. If anyone picks up one of these and feels like sending a can or two out of it over to the museum we'd appreciate it!