Most space food, it seems, is pretty bad, and of course the astronauts know this better than anybody, which is why in 1965 John Young smuggled a Wolfie’s corned beef sandwich onto Gemini III to surprise his crewmate Gus Grissom. It was only a 5 hour flight so it must have been done for laughs rather than to whet a jaded appetite, and after two hours Young duly produced his sandwich. That’s John Young, below. We even have the dialogue.

GRISSOM: Where did that come from?
YOUNG: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?
GRISSOM: Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.
YOUNG: It was a thought, anyway.
GRISSOM: Yep.
YOUNG: Not a very good one.

– Geoff Nicholson, Psycho-Gourmet.

If you didn’t have favorite astronaut before, I hope John Young just earned that distinction. He’s got a pretty healthy space resume, too: Dude walked on the moon, piloted the first space shuttle, and was aboard the fastest-moving manned vehicle ever. And he did all that despite a reputation as a renegade after callously sneaking a sandwich into space, perhaps outer space’s first sandwich*.

Later space sandwich experiments apparently went over better, as the post includes this photo:

*- Presumably if there are other advanced carbon-based life forms in the universe, they’ve figured out sandwiches too. If basically every culture on earth could develop some sort of protein wrapped in some sort of starch, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t happen in outer space too. It’s one of the hallmarks of civilization.

Link comes via Twitterer @kmflemming.