3187: High Altitude Cooking Instructions

High Altitude Cooking Instructions

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Title text: 1,300,000-1,400,000 ft: Ask a crew member to show you how to use the ISS food warmer.

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Explanation

This is one of 61 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a crew member using the ISS food warmer. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

At higher altitudes, cooking experiences extra complications. This was previously mentioned in 2153: Effects of High Altitude. This comic imagines food preparation instructions with additional caveats specifically for high-altitude cooking.

While the first two sections are reasonable accommodations, the instructions - as is typical for xkcd - soon veer into absurdity. At an altitude of 250,000 ft (approximately 76,200 meters), the instructions assume the user is partaking in some kind of controlled spaceflight. The "cooking instructions", therefore, are instead instructions for reentry; basically, telling the user "You can wait until you get home".

The title text goes a step further and assumes that the user is in orbit - specifically, on the International Space Station. Anyone on an orbiting space station is presumably going to be on that space station for an extended period, so they cannot wait until after they return to Earth for a meal, so the "cooking instructions" simply direct the user to someone who can show them how to use the on-board facilities.

In 2022, spaceman extraordinaire Scott Manley uploaded a rigorously scientific presentation titled Can You Cook a Turkey by Dropping It From Space?. A similar question was discussed in the 2013 What if blog post, "Steak Drop".

Transcript

This is one of 32 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Two notes are attached to a thin grey board, only the bottom of which is visible and slightly slanted in the frame.]

[The higher note, mostly cut off:]

[...] remove from the [...] for 3 minutes before serving.

[The lower note:]

High altitude cooking instructions

3,500-6,500 ft: Add 1/2 cup water, increase cook time to 12 minutes

6,500-9,500 ft: Add 1 1/4 cups water, increase cook time to 18 minutes

250,000-450,000 ft: Orient reentry vehicle for aerodynamic stability. Deploy parachutes at 10,000 ft. Descend, keeping crew capsule tightly covered, for 3-4 minutes. After splashdown, follow sea level cooking instructions.

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Discussion

Okay, but now I am imagining an inverse package labelling for ISS foodstuffs. 209.52.88.130 01:17, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I think ISS qualifies as "sea level": the key is the atmospheric pressure, height per se does nothing to food 185.36.194.156 01:44, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

The ISS maintains pretty much sea level atmosphere, and seems to also maintain similar composition, but there's definitely going to be complications with microgravity. Now I want to see what boiling water and steam look like in a zero g atmosphere R128 (talk) 08:48, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

"...throughout the duration of cooking, hold cooker at arm's length and spin at roughly 30rpm, or as low as 5rpm if free-floating..." 82.132.244.242 13:13, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

You try cooking on the ISS the way you cook at sea level, you're gonna have several cups of boiling water in microgravity. 207.195.86.104 04:55, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I am editing the transcription and confused where the notes are attached. Now that the higher note reads ‘remove from heat [...] for 3 minutes before serving’, it may be food packaging, but the paint is too thin for it to be used for that purpose. And the space is seemingly inadequate for typical food labels (nutrition, ingredients, manufacturer, etc). 物灵 (talk) 05:10, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

The higher note might just be the ‘sea level cooking instructions’, reading:

Sea level cooking instructions

[... ... ... ...]

remove from heat [...]

for 3 minutes before serving.

物灵 (talk) 09:01, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

It may be a box of pasta or similar, which can be shaped pretty thin - I have spaghetti boxes which are maybe an inch thick and quite large. The nutritional information, etc could be higher up on the board/box shown in the comic R128 (talk) 09:53, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I think it may say from heat, but I also think that is just good guessing. And it seems there is more further on. Could be something else like remove from what ever. I have removed it from the transcript after fro, as it is not clear on the drawing. Anything that needs an explanation do not belong in the transcript. --Kynde (talk) 13:46, 30 December 2025 (UTC)
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