Astronaut Breakfast Menus Are Now Secret
Keith’s note: I asked a question at a media event today. During Apollo NASA went out of their way to lets us know everything about astronauts including what they eat. Yesterday a reporter asked a simple routine question and got a routine ‘I don’t know – I’ll get back to you response’. Another reporter followed up and got a response to the effect that breakfast menus are exempt from disclosure. Really? NASA regularly puts features up about things like this. How can NASA expect to excite the Artemis Generation when they have lame excuses for not disclosing the most innocuous things? The answer I got was three astronauts talking about the food they ate. No one actually answered my question. Yes this is sily. That’s the point.
Regarding @NASA's #DEMO2 breakfast non-answer: #NASA seems to be a tone deaf when it comes to what people outside their PR bubble find interesting. These ads when I was a kid in the 60s made me want to eat what the astronauts ate. Maybe the #Artemis Generation is interested too. pic.twitter.com/ldSI6cA7tP
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 26, 2020
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Some clarification: the astronaut office considers the breakfast menu exempt from disclosure because "crew members may occasionally have dietary restrictions and such that they would like to keep private." A far cry from the Apollo days as Jeff notes: https://t.co/Qns9Tpn2Kd
— Joey Roulette (@joroulette) May 25, 2020
I wonder if there will be a similarly firm no comment when they are asked if beans and cornbread were served after the launch.
Welcome to the world of HIPAA.
I suspect that its been so long, nearly 9 years, since there has been a crew launch from American soil the current PAO simply forgot the type of questions reporters like to ask and just didn’t know. And rather than saying they didn’t know and saying they would ask just choose to be silent since it didn’t seem to them that it is that important as a question.
The question was asked by The Atlantic’s Marina Koren at 50:50 during the May 25 Pre-Launch Briefing, and Norm Knight, Chief of the Flight Director Office, was happy to say he didn’t know.
* MK: … What are they having for breakfast on the big day?
* NK: Well, I’ll tell you I don’t know what they’re having for breakfast …
* MK: Will you let me know when you find out?
* NK: I will do so.
Keith, what exchange with a PAO are you describing?
Joey Roulette form Reuters was told that this is a crew privacy issue. He tweeted the response from NASA.
Thanks Keith. FWIW, here is a link to the exchange between Marina Koren and Norm Knight: https://youtube.com/watch?v…
Keith, I just saw your question at 16:10 into the Administrator Briefing. Good try!
They deflected on the privacy question (and did a pretty good job at it — it may well be that the launch morning menu hasn’t been set yet). Perhaps they were caught off guard and don’t know if there is a privacy issue under current guidelines. Sure would have been nice if they had committed on getting back to you on the specifics of what you asked.
Administrator Briefing: http://www.space-multimedia…
This could have been a question about anything routine. The fact that they can’t answer a simple question that millions of Americans might resonate with speaks to some chronic tone deafness at NASA.
Perhaps. This is often the away they punt when the do not know the answer and are afraid to speculate.
Maybe it’s just a health or personal hygiene issue we just don’t need to know about. Maybe Alan Shepard did or did not mind the world hearing about his issues but …
I’m glad that this isn’t considered to be public information. What dietary needs any of us have is our personal business, to be discussed with our medical people, not the media.
I think that is starting to get a little far-fetched, I mean we are talking about what two healthy people are having for breakfast, not a medical condition. I highly doubt that either astronaut cares if anyone knows what they will have for breakfast on launch day, if anything they would probably be somewhat bemused that anyone is interested. Although I’m sure they are aware that most of the general public has always had a fascination with what space travel is like and people tend to want to know about things they can relate to, and what astronauts eat in space is a very common question that astronauts always get. And similarly the launch day breakfast topic has from the early days just been a common piece of information, trivia if you will, that was often offered as information even if reporters didn’t ask.
Sure, if for medical or personal reasons an astronaut is having something unusual and prefers that this information not be made public, they have every right to privacy. But we have no reason to believe that is the case, we just have a canned HR/Legal position that assumes a hypothetical and thus shuts down the question as one they won’t answer. Instead of simply asking “Hey Bob and Doug, those crazy reporters want to know what you guys are having for breakfast on launch day, okay if we tell them?”. But I guess nowadays even asking that question would be seen as a violation of their privacy.
If you selectively withhold such information about one person, you immediately alert everyone that this person has an issue that’s behind the choice. By keeping private information private about everyone, you avoid drawing attention to any given individual.
The “Space Food Sticks” example offered above (Gawd, those were hideous), is a completely different topic. That’s tech developed for the space program to which private citizens were given access. That doesn’t make an astronaut’s dietary restrictions and health status a matter open to public poking and prodding. I don’t want to know if Doug or Bob has a GI issue that requires a tailored diet. That is, frankly, none of the public’s business.
We are talking about one launch which has a high profile and thus a lot of public interest and news attention. After all once past STS-1 (where it was reported that Young and Crippen had steak and eggs) people weren’t exactly clamoring to know what Shuttle astronauts had for breakfast. That’s why I am saying that the hypothetical is getting pretty extreme here, that on this one particular launch, which has high media attention, that one of the two astronauts has something on their breakfast menu that if it were published it might start rumors about how their digestive system is doing.
Now ongoing, with multiple missions and increased crew sizes sure you increase the chance that on a particular flight someone might prefer that their dietary selections on launch day are not published. But by then no one will likely be asking anyway. And even if they did you simply don’t make that information available about any of the crew members on that flight.
Okay to work with the hypothetical, possibly either Doug or Bob did in fact make a privacy request. If so then the non-answer that was given was appropriate. But I highly doubt that is the case here, and I am with Keith that this more likely speaks about being tone deaf than about concerns with privacy.
It’s not a hypothetical thing, but a legal one. If you give out information about _any_ member of a group’s health (which includes dietary requirements) then you are giving out information about _all_ members of the group’s health. And that’s not legal. If the press asks and the government says, “no, 98% of our people do not have that medical problem, but we can’t tell you about three of them”, that’s going to be taken to mean those three people _do_ have the problem in question. If they were allowed to release such information anyone who didn’t have a problem, and didn’t mind talking about it, that would be statement that the others did have a problem. Which isn’t legal. Maybe that is a difference between today and the things reporters were told about astronauts in the 1980s and earlier. Maybe the difference is how worried people are about those laws and litigation.
I don’t think that applies to this because no one is asking for medical information, or dietary requirements. Just a simple question “What are they having for breakfast?”. If revealing what people will or have eaten violates medical laws, then there should be absolutely no discussion ever about what astronauts on ISS eat, at least no mention of what a particular crew has or will eat. And no more videos or photos of astronauts gathering together during meals, because someone might be able to determine what a particular astronaut is eating. And certainly no mention of what food has been flown up to ISS to a particular crew on cargo flights.
It seems kind of a stretch to think that it’s revealing anything about someone’s medical condition based solely on what they ate for one meal. So what if one of the astronauts skipped the eggs, does that mean they have an egg intolerance, or an egg allergy? Or maybe they just don’t like the way the KSC kitchen cooks the eggs? Or maybe they simply don’t like eggs.
Well, yes, that would be fairly stupid. Unfortunately, many laws and regulations have fairly stupid implications. That doesn’t change the fact that NASA has to follow them. If there is a regulation against public disclosure of an employee’s medical condition, and that’s interpreted to mean not making any statements about anyone’s diet, what’s a government agency supposed to do? Making statements about some employees diet but saying they can’t about other employees diet, does give away information. So, yes, the whole thing is a bit excessive, but the options are NASA following the rules, no matter how unreasonable, or changing the rules. NASA blowing off a legal requirement isn’t something I could see them doing.
Agree if it is specifically stated as such by law or regulation there’s not much they can do, but I suspect that is not the case here. Yes I know the lawyers will say you can never be 100% certain about how a regulation might be interpreted and that could be the driving force here, but I think it’s just as possible that someone just finds it easier to make a decision that they know they will not be internally criticized for.
Is this a HIPPAA thing?
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think so. If it’s a legal concern, it would be over the uncertainty in what a good lawyer could convince a jury of (or the cost of dealing with a lawsuit.) Many organizations err on the side of caution, and some take that way too far.
And here I was, hoping for an update on the weather forecast for the Cape on Wednesday afternoon.
What other unimportant questions can we pester SpaceX and NASA PAO with, and obsess about? What the crew had for breakfast today? What color and style of socks and underwesr they’ll wear during launch? When they last had their hair cut? Just because NASA PAO publicized a whole bunch of everyday stuff about astronauts back in the day does not mean it is a requirement they do so until the end of time.
Why not? They want everyone in America to know what the astronauts are doing but can’t even answer a simple question like this?
How much breakfast info is needed to inspire the Artemis Generation? Maybe they don’t care. If they do care very much about it, I hope you’re asking for more than the menu, to satisfy their need for inspiring info. After launch, you should demand a full report on each astronaut’s caloric intake, if he/she ate all or only some of what was served, if he/she asked for non-menu items, if the Flight Surgeon demanded each astronaut consume only what was served and declined requests for more coffee, orange juice, whatever.
Have you asked them? How do you know? As for your other items – you can find that easily at NTRS.
Discussions between flight crew and Flight Surgeons are posted on-line? Huh. You learn something new every day. And no person of any age I’ve talked with, who knew I worked for NASA, ever asked me for a link to astronaut launch day and flight menus. Or asked me if a particular astronaut liked dogs more than cats, or liked red socks.
Anyway…at what point do we stop treating everything an astronaut does as special and inspiring to the public? Was Chuck Yeager on the fence about becoming a pilot until he read what Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindbergh had for breakfast the day Eddie made ace and Charles took off for Paris? Could be.
Collecting astronaut trivia and getting it cleared for release takes effort by people. Is that the best use of their time and effort? TANSTAAFL.
Oh, well. Thank you for your work on NASAWatch, Keith. Always interesting, even when I disagree with you.
Thanks for the compliment but I am confused as to what point you are trying to make.
The papers want to know whose shirt you wear.
Exactly.
Maybe why everyone asks unimportant questions probably a total lack of knowledge what this mission is about. I’ve not followed really closely the details (mostly overall in how it fits into history of HSF). Why are the suits so different? I see this glass cockpit and thinking with all that shaking and rocking on liftoff, and some during thruster activity, how are switches to be handled as compared to the Apollo/Shuttle hard switch and guards. I don’t know, almost all I’ve seen so far are generic models for dog and pony shows, press briefings of “it’s new, it’s great.” But then I’m not in that business so I really don’t know. Maybe this is where those like Miles Obrien show that’s how they make the big bucks by asking interesting questions that engage both general public and the space geeks.
You mean like: How will the astronauts to go the bathroom in space?
How many times has that question been asked since the 1960s?
NASA has become incredibly paranoid about crew health. A project I was working on for a while in one of the high bays was in danger of getting kicked out of our lab at JSC at random times so that crew members that had returned from the ISS could swim in the old WETF and use some exercise equipment as part of their rehab. They didn’t want any outsiders to see the crew there due to “HIPAA concerns”.
Exactly. They are special.
In other words: Someone is a Vegetarian.
Eating a ‘plant based diet’ (Vegan) or being vegetarian lacks have the negativity it once did, though. (Full disclosure: Yes, I’m one…).
Ha. Congratulations. Really. I want to stop eating animals too, but I’m still not there yet…
Entering soapbox mode:
Skinny: The important thing isn’t so much the goal, but the path. Just keep after it. Email me if I can help.
And make sure you look into the incredible new products from companies like “Beyond Meat” (‘ground beef’ and burgers that are incredibly good, available at Costco); and “Gardein” which offers a wide range of protein foods. Both are a little pricey but, at least here in SW Florida, Publix Supermarkets offers BOGO on Gardein products several times a year.
One more thing: PETA says, regarding the appeal of eating animals: “Nobody ever said they don’t taste good.”
Sorry, everyone else; now exiting my soapbox.
Space settlers will all be vegans by necessity as using animals as food won’t work in space habits where there is both limited labor and space for producing food.
I think there will always be luxury foods, and I could see meat in space being one. But I agree that it would be highly limited by resources. I can imagine a bit of rabbit or pheasant in the more expensive meals. But steaks strike me as a fantasy. And some vegetables wouldn’t make sense either. It’s not like anyone will be growing wheat on their limitless acres.
I hope the Artemis generation doesn’t want to try the Space Food sticks. In retrospect, they were awful. Yuck!
I agree. But they were astronaut food so all the kids my age wanted them.
Astronauts! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight, we dine in Space!
Hey NASA! We’re curious what they ate, not why.
Of course this may be the answer to your question about Tang. How would you be able to advertise you are the drink NASA selected for Astronauts if the food NASA selects is now secret!?
Why NASA could not or did not answer a question about what astronauts have for breakfast is one issue. But I think it’s worth asking why they would have been asked. On many occasions I’ve said we need to get away from the idea of astronauts being superstars or celebrities. That’s necessary if we want living and working in space to be a normal, common-place activity. I don’t really care what a field geologist has for breakfast, nor what a construction worker, nor an aircraft pilot. The fact that people care about what an astronaut has for breakfast shows how far we have to go, before working in space is considered a normal activity.
Next up boxers or briefs under that slick SpaceX spacesuit.
Depends
(After all, it is a 19 hour flight to the ISS!)
steak and eggs is what I saw on twitter
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Yeah, SpaceX seemed to have no qualms about mentioning what they ate.
The tweet: https://twitter.com/Astro_D…
Text: “Steak and eggs. Question answered!”
Gotta wonder if they had caught wind of the teapot tempest themselves, or it someone pointed it out to them.
I just read all of these comments. That is ten minutes of my life that I will not get back.
AND I know what I want for breakfast tomorrow!
Understood but it’s not as if any of us actually care what they have for breakfast, that’s not the purpose of the discussion. There has always been a public fascination with spaceflight and some people including me think it’s interesting to observe how most people approach it with a combination of wide-eyed wonder mixed with a complete lack of knowledge about almost any aspect of it. I was at the dentist yesterday and my dentist has TV’s on the wall to keep you occupied (or distracted I guess), normally they have one of the news channels on and so they were showing coverage of the astronauts preparing for the launch. The hygienist was very aware of the launch but then asked me “Where are they going exactly?”. I told her to the International Space Station. I told her there have been people in space continuously on the station since year 2000, knowing she probably didn’t know that, and she didn’t. She seemed surprised, and she said it’s funny you never hear about that (how true).
When I have been to KSC or JSC in their exhibit area you sometimes inadvertently overhear other people’s conversations, and again it is almost always pure fascination with almost zero knowledge.
Since the early days NASA and the media navigate this as best they can by providing small doses of technical information mixed usually with larger servings of the type of personally relatable information that most of the public is actually interested in (no one cares that the propellants are chilled to cryogenic temperatures).
So it is a bit shocking, although sadly not unexpected, that what was once sort of a fun fact that you used to hear mentioned about launches, one that again the public seemed to enjoy hearing about, is now buried because of straining over worries about possible interpretations of some legal restrictions.
Yes that’s the world we live in now and maybe it’s not worth spending ten minutes discussing it especially if we conclude that it’s futile to think it will ever change.
Well said. Personally I do not believe we still have the same interest model today that we had in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days when we all empathized with the astronauts when we all found out how truly dreadful Tang was. I have many other interests and see the questions from auto mechanics, MDs, woodworkers, etc. The public IS interested in the nuts and bolts, and the discussions are not about what the astronauts had for breakfast. I always thought it was a bit macabre anyway . . . sort of implying a last meal for the (potentially) condemned.
But the privacy issue being thrown out there by NASA is horsepucky.
Sure it runs the gamut and what they had for breakfast would be one extreme, but not the best example of what I meant by relatable. It
just happened to be the example du jour since that’s what the thread is about.
By relatable I mean what do astronauts experience. Most people want to know what is it like in space. What is weightlessness like. What do astronauts do in space. How do they sleep and what is that like. What do the stars look like. That type of thing. Those topics in my opinion are what the vast majority of the public is interested in. To them space is exciting and they want to hear interesting and exciting things. Most won’t be interested to know what it’s like to sit for two hours on your back wondering if you will launch today, and how you feel when it does scrub. Yes some will be interested in that but that moves into a deeper level of interest and a smaller percentage of the public.
And then there is an even smaller percentage that are interested at least somewhat in the nuts and bolts as you mentioned. I had a co-worker who was interested in where they get the oxygen from, and he was actually interested when I told him about how there are multiple ways but the primary method on the space station is to use solar generated electricity to power an electrolysis generator that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. He found that really interesting, but he had no interest in the “rocket” part of things. I think that’s a big divider, people who are interested in rockets and spacecraft (small percentage) and those who are interested in how people live in space (much larger percentage).
But again it runs the gamut, this has been a general discussion about the majority of the general public, which is obviously painting with a broad brush, certainly there are varying levels of interest but again the percentages then begin getting smaller.