Lufthansa Introduces Space Food for Business Class

Frankfurt Main, Germany - July 10, 2015: Airbus A380-800 aircraft of the Lufthansa airline landing at the international airport in Frankfurt Main (FRA) (Photo: iStock)

In a new menu option, Lufthansa is offering astronaut food to business class passengers for a limited time on long-haul flights that start in Germany; the airline initially developed the menu items specifically for a German astronaut staying on the space station.

When German astronaut Alexander Gerst went up to the space station in June, he brought with him some food developed especially for him by Lufthansa. And now, Lufthansa is bringing that food back into orbit by offering it to business class passengers for a limited time.

The dishes, which include ragout, cheese spätzle (egg noodles) with bacon, and maultaschen (stuffed pasta), launched on Lufthansa flights in July and will be offered through the end of August.

“Passengers will have the chance to enjoy one of the menus that Alexander Gerst and his crew will also be receiving on board [the station] as special highlights, chicken ragout with mushrooms,” Lufthansa said in a press release, reported by collectSpace.

The menu items were developed as “bonus food” for the astronauts, meaning that they are extra offerings to the items already available on the space station for daily meals. They’re often just for special occasions while the crew is on board for up to six months.

Lufthansa printed a special menu just for this offering, which notes, “Anyone who dreamed of becoming an astronaut as a child probably didn’t give much thought to the food. And the food on the first outer space expeditions wasn’t really anything worth dreaming about: it’s gone down in history as ‘tubes and cubes.’ Food slurped from tubes; dry cubes which were originally ice cream on Earth. The food that was on offer to them back then and the food available to them now really is worlds apart!”

[Photo: Shutterstock]