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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| Synthite Food | ||
| Compact food for space travelers. |
| The food was simple enough, artificially flavored solids, artificially compacted; jelly-like proteins held in a meshwork of woven threads of digestible carbohydrates. Their artificiality was blatant, but they filled lean stomachs, and supplied vital energy in almost totally digestible form. |
| From Planet of Eternal Night,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1939 Additional resources -
|
I also liked the preferred drink for spacemen, which may remind some fans of NASA in the 1960's of Tang:
Compare to the compact food pastilles from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell and concentro from Armageddon: 2149 AD (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan.
For drinking they had a slightly stimulating, clear-colored liquid, flavored with citric acid, synthetic orange oil and sweetened with glucose.
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