Culinary Tourism in Space Available in 2025

Six guests will be boarding a spaceship called Spaceship Neptune to travel to the stratosphere. For this culinary journey, they must pay a ticket price of 495,000 US dollars (about 8 billion Indonesian Rupiah) per ticket. They can enjoy luxurious dishes while watching the sunrise above the Earth’s curvature.

The outer space culinary tourism will make history as the first culinary tourism in space. Munk will cook a variety of luxurious dishes in the small kitchen available in the spacecraft.

Munk said that he is currently preparing a special menu. The dishes he serves are the result of inspiration from space innovation. “We want to tell the story of space innovation through food, highlighting some of the research that has been done over the past 60 years,” he said in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Saturday (11/5/2024).

One of the menus that he is currently designing is a glowing star dish in the dark made from a type of jelly and jellyfish protein. They are also designing a space waste-based dish from satellites that can be eaten.

“While enjoying our meal, we will discuss several issues happening on this planet, such as deforestation, rising temperatures, and ocean pollution,” she said.

Munk is known as a chef who delivers an experience through his cooking. His restaurant, Munk’s Alchemist, in Copenhagen ranks fifth in the world’s best restaurants in 2023. The restaurant has been awarded two Michelin stars since 2020.

The Spaceship Neptune spacecraft is designed more like an outer space balloon. Space Perspective, the company behind it, said a pressurized capsule will be attached to the balloon. The pressure from the capsule will lift the craft to a height of around 100,000 feet or approximately 30,480 meters above sea level.

The journey was designed to take place for six hours. The organizer promised an exclusive adventure experience, an exploration to the outermost limits of the Earth that most people cannot enjoy.

This culinary tourism is the latest breakthrough in outer space. Until now, astronaut menus in space can be said as unappetizing meals. Their meals are designed to survive in outer space.

The first man in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, for example, ate beef and swallowed liver from an aluminum tube. Now, modern astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) usually only eat packaged foods, such as soup and casserole. The food must be soaked or rehydrated before being eaten. This is done to save weight during the long journey.

Only on special occasions will space food be served like food on Earth. One of them was in 2006, the French masterchef, Alain Ducasse, created a special meal for a special celebration on the ISS.

The food he concocted contained Mediterranean ingredients such as olives, tomatoes, quails, and barracuda. However, this special food is still in canned packaging.

Danish food and wine writer, Rasmus Palsgaard, stated that gastronomy now prioritizes experience, not just food on a plate. This has become increasingly popular among the wealthy.

“More rich people or big corporations have a desire to create something extraordinary that is more than just food,” he said.

Driven by the desire to explore outer space, the space tourism industry continues to thrive. A number of wealthy entrepreneurs have been trying out this space tourism for the past 20 years.

The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, a businessman from the United States. He paid 20 million US dollars to travel to the Mir space station in 2001.

Following this trend, a number of private companies have also offered space travel packages. One of them is Virgin Galactic, which conducted a space tourism trip in July 2021. Tickets were priced at 6.5 billion rupiah per seat.

In addition to Virgin Galactic, other companies are Blue Origin and SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk. However, those trips only provide travels similar to regular astronauts, without including culinary tourism. (AP/AFP)