At 70,000 toes, there isn’t a breathable oxygen, however that doesn’t imply pilots flying at that altitude can’t snack.
Tube meals permit U-2 pilots to nosh on the whole lot from pizza and pasta to grandma’s apple pie whereas cruising at loopy excessive altitudes. The one caveat is that each morsel should match by means of a 3/8-inch-thick straw that may be slurped by means of their extremely pressurized helmets.
The fits and helmets U-2 pilots put on in flight can’t be eliminated, which makes it inconceivable for them to eat utilizing their fingers or commonplace utensils. So the Army’s Fight Feeding Division devised a technique to join tiny tubes of meals to straws within the helmets to feed these excessive flyers.
“The U-2 missions last as long as 12 hours in length and require a supply of meals. Every tube offers 150 to 300 energy,” Fight Feeding Division meals technologist Dan Nattress informed Army Instances. “The aluminum tubes are designed to connect to a straw-like probe that matches by means of a small retractable receptacle on the helmet.”
The tube meals program has been arouns for the reason that Nineteen Fifties, when the U-2 was first flown. And the fits worn by pilots have been truly given to the primary astronauts as properly.
“John Glenn took tube meals on his orbital mission though they don’t seem to be sometimes utilized in house,” Nattress mentioned.
Regardless of their diminutive measurement, the meals pack a punch, and aren’t something like a smoothie. They’ve official meals texture.
“Initially all of the tube meals have been made right into a nice paste or sauce,” Nattress mentioned. “Within the newer varieties we attempt to use as a lot texture as attainable.
In the present day, the Fight Feeding division produces 19 kinds of tube meals, all with distinctive flavors and mouth-feels.
“It’s attainable to make merchandise reminiscent of a beef stew the place the meat, potatoes, carrots, peas and gravy can all be discerned individually,” Nattress famous. “Identical with apple pie the place you style the apples, spices and crust (sure, crust!)”
Having eaten a tube meals within the air is a reasonably distinctive expertise, nonetheless. In actual fact, fewer than than 1,500 pilots have ever flown the U-2 because it first took flight in 1955.
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Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Army Instances. She beforehand served because the Digital Editor of Army Instances and the Army Instances Editor. Different work may be discovered at Nationwide Protection Journal, Activity & Objective, and Protection News.
