Few Americans are afforded the opportunity to break the bonds of gravity and gaze upon Earth from outer space, and fewer still have dined on borscht aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft.
But Longmont native Vance Brand did in 1975.
“They had a lot of food that they were still eating out of tubes, like toothpaste tubes,” Vance told an audience at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center on Wednesday.
“They had fish and borscht, which is a beet soup,” he said. “It was things not too many of us had heard of but we learned about them before the mission. Their food was good too.”
Brand was a command module pilot on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission, which had a United States Apollo spacecraft rendezvous in orbit with the Soviet craft. The Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts spent time aboard each other’s ships and shared their respective cuisine.
“We had a big variety of food,” he said. “We had lots of freeze-dried stuff that you would add hot or cold water to. We didn’t have any leafy salads or anything like that. We had military rations.”
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was Brand’s first space flight, and he would embark on three more on the space shuttles Columbia and Challenger during his career. He remembered that by his last mission, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had introduced fresh fruit into space flights.
“That was very tasty,” he said. “It went well for about three or four days, but then the stuff started to rot. It smelled so bad, we had to put it in a sealed bag and bring it back to Earth.”
Aside from recalling extraterrestrial dining to an audience member during a question-and-answer session, the 86-year-old former astronaut narrated footage of his four space trips.
He also lamented that he won’t be around for another 100 years because he believes space travel will be ramping up, particularly as private industry becomes involved, in particular, a manned mission to Mars.
He added that some of the children alive today might be around to see a person walking on the surface of Mars.
“Some marvelous things might happen in the exploration of space,” Brand said. “It all depends on the will of the people of this country and of the world.”
He said during the brief Q&A session after his initial remarks that he wouldn’t be surprised if life exists under the surface of Mars or beneath the icy surfaces of Europa or Enceladus, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively.
“There are so many galaxies out there and so many stars in each galaxy,” Brand said. “I think it would be almost presumptive for us to assume there isn’t any life out there somewhere.”
When asked what milestones he would like to see humanity achieve, he replied, “sky’s the limit.
“We can’t dream of everything,” he said. “We are making such strides in everything. … The real answer is I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen. I get surprised every 10 years by something I couldn’t even imagine. Like 3D manufacturing. Who would have even thunk it?”
John Bear: 303-473-1355, bearj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/johnbearwithme
