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Old March 25th 05, 08:12 PM
Doug...
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In article , 7lv43nn0c5
@stinkers.org says...

snip

Iirc, by Apollo 12 it had progressed to where the techs were actually
packing "ceremonial" sandwiches into the knee pockets at suit-up (?).
There's a really good foto of Conrad having a sandwich packed at the JSC
archive, I think.


They weren't exactly ceremonial, there was operational logic behind it.
Apollo crews always adjusted their sleep schedules so that, on launch
day, they would get up, have breakfast, suit up and go launch. By the
time they got into orbit, it was well past time for lunch -- but you
didn't want to try and get out of the suits until after TLI. It was
awkward to move around the CM in suits, and preparing a full meal under
those conditions would have taken a lot more time than they wanted to
spend on it.

So, they started packing a snack into the suit pockets, so the crews
could have a light lunch "on the go" as they finished up their pre-TLI
checkouts. IIRC, on Apollo 16 the on-orbit snack was hamburgers -- one
feature story at the time made a big deal about how they would be room-
temperature hamburgers, but that the crew didn't seem to care...

It was good human factors engineering, actually. Just like the drink
bags and food sticks in the Apollo EVA suits. You want your crew at
their best, mentally and physically, and so you try to keep them well-
fed, well-watered and well-rested. You see a lot of emphasis on that in
the later Apollo flights.

--

"The problem isn't that there are so | Doug Van Dorn
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