Maggie Coblentz

Sounds beautiful.

Yeah, I think there's been a few stories

That resonated with me.

Kimchi has been to space.

I know that.

With the first Korean astronaut, kimchi was specially prepared and freeze-dried so it wasn't a living fermented food, but it was understood that this is something of extreme cultural significance and

should figure out a way for it to go to space.

In another instance with JAXA, the Japanese space agency, an astronaut wanted to bring sakura flour, not as food, but as sakura flour to space to remind them of home.

And it wasn't allowed to bring this flour.

So they used a traditional method of preserving this flour in salt and almost disguising it as a food product so that it could be snuck into the menu and then it could arrive in space like this.

Oh, yeah, it's really beautiful.

There's a picture of the astronaut with this floating flower in this sphere, staring lovingly, gazing at it, floating in weightlessness.

And then some of this is food diplomacy, too.

I mean, in the case of kimchi, it's I hope that the astronaut enjoyed it.

But I think it's also decisions from these governments and these space agencies to also make a statement and bring culture with intention to the space station.

Today it is mostly water-based.

I think there was this old school method.

They had this device.

It looked like a briefcase, like truly, and you'd open it up almost like this panini press slash briefcase where you would put your food inside.

I had these heat pads and you would close the briefcase, wait a minute, open it up and eat your food.