Welcome to PLIX Space Food! Explore and create new inventions, experiences, and flavors to enhance the future of dining in outer space!
🥰 Ages 8+ 🕐 1–1.5 Hours 👩👧👦 up to 15 Participants 🍎 1–2 Facilitators 🎨 Craft Materials
Spaceflight is an adventure, but being so far away can be challenging. Astronauts have shared that familiar foods (eaten on Earth) can be a huge source of comfort in space. How can we meet the nutritional, performance-related, and emotional needs of astronauts, as well as future space travelers, through food?
Get Inspiration from the PLIX Community
by the PLIX team
A scent-creator that produces earthly scents (the smell of grass, rain, and home baked goods) for astronauts!
by PLIX team
Space chopsticks—for easy food-grabbing when objects float away in zero-gravity!
by the PLIX team
A device that uses the cold temperatures of space to create pastry dough!
by the PLIX team
A utensil set that easily attaches to spacesuits in zero-gravity environments and is self-cleaning to reduce the use of water onboard the ISS.
Prompts from PLIX
PLIX Community Remixes
Check out this thread on the PLIX forum for examples exploring kitchen tool design for use aboard the ISS, with contributions from the PLIX community!
Check out more examples and experiences from other librarians on the PLIX Forum Space Food space or share your own ideas via our PLIX Remix report form.
Space Food Book Connections
How to Eat in Space, by Helen Taylor Ages 4+
Recommended by Jane Sawyer (West Orange Public Library)
Materials
Supply Kit
Below you'll find some materials that we've found work well for this activity, but it's not necessary to have them all!
Supplementary Resources
PLIX zines are a supplementary resource for patrons and librarians to refer to. Use our guide to cut and assemble them.
Love our zine, but it doesn’t fit your adaptation of the activity? Remix our zine with this Google Slides template!
Use these guidelines about what you need to consider for dining in space
Facilitation
Playtest and Plan
Remember: There’s no one right way to prepare for a workshop. Use these steps as a loose guideline for planning to run this activity.
- Choose one of our prompts, or come up with a prompt that suits your library community. Our activity guides are for getting you started—feel free to change or create new design elements to suit your local community! All PLIX activity guides are designed for a minimum of 1–2 facilitators
- Gather materials and print out the zine.
- Make an example project. Try it out with friends and colleagues. Thoughtfully incomplete, good examples feature a variety of approaches and starting points. Use them to inspire learners to make something uniquely their own. Guide to Making Activity Examples →
- Try the activity with your patrons. Set a date and time. Easily promote your workshop with our editable Space Food flyer →
- Populate your workshop space with diverse example projects. Create and play together!
- Reflect on what you’ve done and consider doing a remix!
Did you come up with new prompts? Share your ideas with your peers on the PLIX Forum. Try our Remix Share-Out template if you’d like us to feature your remix!
Facilitation Tips
By design, this activity invites learners to creatively speculate the future of dining and well-being in outer-space environments. Since there are many ways to explore space food, patrons may need some guidance in how or where to get started. When facilitating this activity, we encourage you to support a tinkering mindset, and consider the following to culture a creative learning environment. In addition, check out our general PLIX Facilitation Techniques →
What We ❤️ About This Activity
🔭 Offers a non-technical entry point for engaging with outer space By emphasizing the social and cultural aspects of spaceflight, this activity invites learners of all backgrounds to get started with design for outer space environments.
👪 Encourages collaboration and co-design Patrons are encouraged to work together to think through designs, communicate ideas, and share their inventions.
🗺️ Supports multi-cultural dialogue Through the sharing of recipes and culinary traditions, this activity shines a spotlight on the lived experience of patrons.
♻️ No new materials required The space food workshop prompts can be easily run with on-hand or leftover craft materials and/or recyclables.
into creative learning facilitation with our Self-Guided Mini Course. It’ll also help you get started running your first PLIX workshop.
About PLIX Space Food
This activity was developed in collaboration with Maggie Coblentz, an industrial designer and space food researcher who works with the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative.
Other ways to engage with the PLIX Space Food program
- Looking for some background music? Check out our PLIX Space Explorations Playlist 🎶
- Questions? Ask them on the PLIX Discussion Forum 🙋♀️
- Share your experience running this activity on Twitter or Instagram and tag us @heyplix