Ice Cream Myth Busted…
One small step for man, one giant step for…Ice Cream myths?
We’ve all been there, the science museum gift shop or novelty shops dotted in those convenient tourist places we can’t seem to avoid no matter how hard we try. Quite often there’s something curious available for sale, an Ice Cream product, outside of a freezer, called Astronaut Ice Cream. Really… Ice Cream for Astronauts! Originally made for the Apollo missions, Kids nowadays know of it and always seem to want to try it, so brace your wallets when visiting the science gift shops!
11th October 1968, Apollo 7’s mission launched, on board was American Astronaut Walt Cunningham, now 86 years old and retired, and it was alleged that on board this 11 day long mission was a vanilla flavoured astronaut ice cream. A Freeze dried and completely dehydrated product, with the consistency of a cracker, no expiry date and no need to freeze either.
An original investigation made by Vox.com made a shocking discovery…Astronaut Ice Cream has NEVER been to space! So Houston…we definitely have a problem!
Walt Cunningham said when asked about the Vanilla treat “We never had any of that”
The so called Astronaut Ice Cream, which comes in Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla and Neapolitan flavours, was never documented going up in any other missions.
Even in 2013, a video interview with Astronaut Chris Hatfield stated “How can we have something up here that’s crumbled and crunched?” Such a product would risk small pieces of crumbly treat, in zero gravity, getting into equipment and consoles creating very big problems. It could also get into the eyes and even be breathed in if it’s floating around uncontrollably.
So there we have it, myth solved. Astronaut Ice Cream has always and always will be, safe here on earth in our gift shops as a novelty to be sold.
Space Missions now include actual freezers so astronauts are eating ice cream, but normal ice cream that we get from the ice cream van for example. So if you want Astronaut Ice Cream, go to your local ice cream van! It’s the same thing!
