OSAKAkonbini — a little bit of everything, inspired by Japan.
Space Cup Noodle1 min read
Instant ramen is a well-known ally of students and bachelors, but it’s also pretty popular with travelers in Japan. Since it has a long shelf life and it’s easy to prepare, it’s not uncommon for a dinner away from home to be a cup of instant noodles in a hotel room, especially if you’re staying in a remote location without a lot of local dining options.And since you can’t get much farther away from the restaurant rows of the big city than outer space, Nissin is now producing multiple types of space ramen, so that astronauts can enjoy the familiar and comforting flavor as they orbit Earth.Naturally, the company’s flagship foodstuff, Cup Noodle, is accounted for, in a variant now known as Space Cup Noodle, which features dried shrimp, ground pork, scrambled egg, and green onion, just like the terrestrial Cup Noodle you can get at the grocery store (and also the terrifying Cup Noodle ice cream that we keep trying to scrub from our memory).However, the starches of Space Cup Noodle’s noodles are specially formulated so that they’ll reconstitute with 70-degree Celsius (158-degree Fahrenheit) water, the temperature readily supplied to astronauts on the International Space Station, as opposed to the boiling 100-degree Celsius water that normal Cup Noodle requires. The noodles are also thicker and the broth more viscous, to prevent them from swirling around and causing problems in the ISS’s microgravity environment.
Instant ramen is a well-known ally of students and bachelors, but it’s also pretty popular with travelers in Japan. Since it has a long shelf life and it’s easy to prepare, it’s not uncommon for a dinner away from home to be a cup of instant noodles in a hotel room, especially if you’re staying in a remote location without a lot of local dining options.And since you can’t get much farther away from the restaurant rows of the big city than outer space, Nissin is now producing multiple types of space ramen, so that astronauts can enjoy the familiar and comforting flavor as they orbit Earth.Naturally, the company’s flagship foodstuff, Cup Noodle, is accounted for, in a variant now known as Space Cup Noodle, which features dried shrimp, ground pork, scrambled egg, and green onion, just like the terrestrial Cup Noodle you can get at the grocery store (and also the terrifying Cup Noodle ice cream that we keep trying to scrub from our memory).However, the starches of Space Cup Noodle’s noodles are specially formulated so that they’ll reconstitute with 70-degree Celsius (158-degree Fahrenheit) water, the temperature readily supplied to astronauts on the International Space Station, as opposed to the boiling 100-degree Celsius water that normal Cup Noodle requires. The noodles are also thicker and the broth more viscous, to prevent them from swirling around and causing problems in the ISS’s microgravity environment.
