there is a very magical food in the world, which is often called "space ice cream" or "astronaut ice cream". It is always associated with space and NASA by merchants and sold in a very "space" package:

it does not need to be put in the refrigerator, and it can be preserved for several years and can be taken out and eaten at any time.

looks very cool!

but in fact, it doesn't taste that cool (I agree with that, although some friends may like this special taste). It is called ice cream, but it is completely different from the taste of ice cream. Ice cream is soft, but it has a dry and crisp taste. Some people describe it as flavored chalk or dry chewing pills (but to be fair, it must be much better than chalk and pills. )

classic tricolor chalk sandwiches (no)

chalk sandwiches (no … ), and chalk balls (no, hello)

feels like eating fake ice cream.

so what on earth is this so-called space ice cream?

it must be admitted that although it tastes like fake ice cream, it is really made of ice cream. This is actually a freeze-dried product, that is, a dehydrated freeze-dried version of ice cream made by sublimating the small ice crystals in food at low temperatures and low pressure. The interior of ice cream contains many honeycomb-like small voids, which will be destroyed by melting, while freeze-drying retains its internal state, so it will eventually remain porous. (but the taste has completely changed.

(microstructure of ice cream)

he uses ordinary tricolor ice cream to completely restore the crunchy taste of space ice cream.

(maybe you will remember this face, he is the one from the DIY electron microscope: very explosive!

how did this ice cream come from in the first place?

although it is said that the freeze-dried ice cream is related to the Apollo 7 program, astronaut Walt Cunningham who was involved in the mission made it clear that they had never seen it in space. Jennifer Levasseur, curator of the National Air and Space Museum, agrees that the creepy-tasting ice cream may have never been in space, or it may have been developed and tested on the ground, but it was not adopted.

Vox discussed this issue in a video and said bluntly in the title: space ice cream is a fraud!

their argument is that there is no clear evidence or record that the product really went up in the sky, which also mentioned that technically, easy-to-fall space ice cream can also cause trouble.

however, you can search for reports of Chinese astronauts eating space ice cream:

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(in any case, I can't agree with this at all. _ (: astronauts "∠) _)

by the way, astronauts have actually eaten real ice cream in space. For example, in the following report, it is mentioned that SpaceX delivers things to the International Space Station, including ice cream, or Bluebell.

(astronauts say we don't want to eat freeze-dried chalk or anything. If only I had real ice cream)