Humankind first went into space in 1961. Fifty-eight years later, fewer than 600 people have followed. So though commercial space travel seems inevitable, for now, it’s still not a reality for the vast majority of humanity. But though sending a person into space is tricky, as one YouTuber recently proved, pretty much anyone can send food into space — and if they’re lucky, they can even eat it when it returns.
Granted, we’ve seen this stunt before. Everything from a bottle of IPA to a loaf of garlic bread has been sent into space using the same basic technique: lifted into the stratosphere with a weather balloon and documented with an onboard digital camera. However, British YouTuber Killem’s space food stunt has a couple of things that set his recently published video apart.
First, after sending a Big Mac 100,000 feet above the Earth and taking a bite upon its return, he bills it as “the first McDonald’s burger in space” — a claim that might not be true, but if it is, is definitely one small step for Ronald McDonald.
But second, what makes Killem’s video even more endearing is that most of these types of videos are either professional promotional shoots or at least put together by someone with a science background. Killem’s attempt to get a burger into space and eat it has a true DIY feel about it (did he need any sort of permit to do this?) further demonstrated by the fact that his effort almost failed for all sorts of reasons: from the balloon not getting off the ground on the first attempt to the footage cutting off before the burger plummeted back to Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/kSDX4gGhHfI?feature=oembed
Despite these hiccups, however, Killem achieved his goal: The Big Mac got into the stratosphere (as proved by the GoPro footage before it cut off) and he got to taste the burger afterward, as proved by his assessment of “that’s not nice.” For the record, it took him nearly a day to retrieve the Big Mac, so whether it’s was ruined in space or simply by sitting outside for way too long is not entirely clear.
But the moral is clear: You may not be able to travel to space quite yet, but if you have the gumption, you too can send food into space. The reward is a terrible tasting burger.
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