The first manned missions to outer space by both the United
States and former USSR in 1961 were short trips that last no
longer than two hours. However, the former USSR went on to
complete a few missions that lasted more than 24 hours before
the US completed its first 24-hour space flight in 1963. The
increasing durations of the space flights by both the American
astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts make one thing very clear: at
some point, the crew must eat. Russian Borscht soup in a tube.
Courtesy: Aliazimi The first food delivery systems were, of all
things, tubes. They had the look and feel of a tube of
toothpaste, but what came out of these tubes was anything but
minty. The former USSR’s Yuri Gagarin, who in 1961 became both
the first human to travel into space and the first to orbit the
earth, dined on three 160 g toothpaste-type tubes: two servings
of puréed meat and one chocolate sauce. The combined crew of the
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (1975) ate tubes of borscht and
caviar, along with canned beef tongue