A NASA astronaut recently revealed what a makeshift cheeseburger in space looks like — and nothing about it looks appetizing.
When you’re in space and don’t have easy access to much, let alone a fast food restaurant — you have to make do with what you have.
That’s exactly what Jonny Kim, who is currently on the International Space Station (ISS), had to do when he was recently craving a burger.
He took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his “ranger burger” creation — which consisted of “beef steak, wheat snack bread, cheese spread as both topping and glue, potatoes au gratin layered in the middle, and a generous slather of gochujang red pepper paste from a care package on the SpX-32 Cargo Dragon.”
“I miss cooking for my family, but this hits the spot in its own way,” he wrote in his tweet.
Kim has been on the spacecraft since early April and will spend eight months there, according to the Daily Mail.
While it’s easy for people on Earth to judge Kim’s creation — astronauts are not only forced to get creative with what they have access to, they have to make sure they’re consuming enough calories while in outer space.
Two NASA astronauts that were stranded on the ISS for five months chowed down on pizza, roast chicken and shrimp cocktail.
Unfortunately, processed food is what many in their position have to eat because the Space Food Systems Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston has limited fresh fruit and veggies.
“There’s fresh fruit at first,” a specialist told The Post, “but as the three months continues, that goes away — and their fruits and vegetables are packaged or freeze-dried.”
All meat products — like the beef steak used in Kim’s burger — and eggs are originally cooked on Earth and are then reheated in space for consumption.
Food aside — even making a cup of coffee is quite the task while in space.
Supposedly, astronauts use a Zero-G cup, or capillary cup, to guide the coffee liquid from the cup’s base to their lips to sip it as if they were on Earth.
“We take gravity for granted. Generally, we are unaware of the weight of our hands, or how easily we pour coffee into a cup. We don’t stop to think, ‘Will the coffee rise up and pour out?’ or ‘Can we pour the coffee?’ We just do it,” said spaceman Don Pettit.
