Ever since humans have journeyed to space, their meals there have proved to be, well, nothing to write home about.
That could change after a Michelin-starred chef teamed up with the Florida-based start-up Space Perspective to take fine-dining to the upper atmosphere late next year.
Six guests are set to ascend aboard Spaceship Neptune to the stratosphere, where they would enjoy an immersive dining experience served up by Danish Michelin-starred chef Rasmus Munk.
Photo: AP
Munk, 33, would travel with the guests in the capsule and serve the meal himself, from a small kitchen.
He said his menu would be inspired by the impact of space innovation.
“We want to tell stories through the food,” Munk said. “We … want to talk and highlight some of the research that’s been done through the last 60 years.”
Photo: AFP / Space Perspective
“I think that will make an even stronger impact when you’re up there and looking down,” he said.
Spaceship Neptune is more of a balloon than a rocket. The company says its pressurized capsule, attached to a balloon, would lift to an altitude of about 30,480m above sea level where guests would dine while watching the sun rise over the curvature of the Earth.
Organizers are promising an out-of-this-world experience for those with an appetite for adventure, but such an astronomic menu comes with a fittingly astronomic price tag — US$495,000 per ticket.
Photo: AFP / Space Perspective
They say the trip is to last six hours and that they are still in discussion with potential participants.
It is one of the latest offerings by private firms that include Blue Origin Enterprises LP, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
The flight would not technically reach “space.” Spaceship Neptune would ascend to about 30km, well below the Karman line, the boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, which is about 100km from Earth.
Munk’s menu is expected to be a far cry from meals eaten by astronauts.
The first man in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, squeezed beef and liver paste into his mouth from an aluminum tube.
To save on weight, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) usually dine on dishes packaged in rehydratable containers, including soups and casseroles.
There have been some exceptions. In 2006, French master chef Alain Ducasse created special gourmet food that could be used for celebratory meals aboard the ISS. The tinned dishes included typical Mediterranean ingredients, such as olives, tomatoes, quails and swordfish.
Although Munk is mysterious about his menu, he said he is planning to incorporate glow-in-dark stars made from aerogel and jellyfish protein.
“We are also working on an edible piece of space junk from a satellite,” he said.
“And then, we want to talk about some of the things going on on the planet ... from deforestation to temperatures rising and the garbage in our seas,” he added.
Munk’s Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen has held two Michelin stars since 2020, and last year was ranked fifth-best restaurant in the world.
Guests dine on a menu of 50 edible “impressions,” and the experience is accompanied by performers and installations, all set in the restaurant’s own architecture — a former theater set building workshop in Copenhagen.
At the restaurant’s center is a large planetarium dome, where guests eat surrounded by projections of Earth seen from space, oceans, forests and even a beating heart.
“I think fine dining, in general, is changing a lot,” Munk said. “And I think you, as a guest, require more an experience in the future.”
Danish food and wine writer Rasmus Palsgaard said gastronomy is becoming more about the experience, and less about what is on the plate.
“More wealthy people or big companies have a desire to really create something special that is more than a meal,” he said. “It’s about much more than just the food being served in front of you.”
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS