The HabForum

The Rocket City Grill at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center does not have a corned beef sandwich! This injustice has gone on long enough!

Please help me give the historical corned beef sandwich a voice! Join me on Facebook at We Want the Young Sandwich (Corned Beef) http://www.facebook.com/groups/219686081430725/ .

I have also posted a blog at http://www.graphitefree.com/2011/11/god ... rned-beef/

Let it go. Using your logic corned beef would be the only sandwich on the menu. Everything else would come in a tube! I too love corned beef and John Young but the true injustice here is that the ham sandwich mentioned in your blog is not called The "HAM" sandwich.

Digger, you are simply a sandwich hater! You point out technicalities like the corned beef sandwich was eaten in the Gemini program not the Mercury program and you want there to be a sandwich named for a monkey! However that may be a great idea, we are trying to teach history here and that is what the corned beef sandwich is... HISTORY!

BTW I started a Twitter feed to called OccupyMarsGrill in protest... true I have zero followers, but this corned beef movement will succeeded

I'm vegan/vegetarian, so I can't say much about the sandwich... but it would be nice to see 'real' space food on the menu, for novelty sake. They have quite an extensive menu for the shuttle and ISS - tortillas with spicy sauce, curries, rice pilaf, candy coated chocolate, Tang, etc.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/ref ... /food.html
(and a whole lot more...)

My love of sandwiches in general cannot honestly be questioned. In fact, I ate a corned beef sandwich in the camp cafe on the date of my last post. It quickly became history.
I agree that the sandwich is history. It's just not Mercury history.
SpaceCanada has the right idea.
Red Bull, perhaps you should start a "We want a Tortilla with spicy sauce" page. I might even follow that on twitter.

As an ex-Space Camper who works in marketing, may I offer my perspective.

I don't think the average museum visitor will get it. There would have to be a "Food In Space" exhibit that the visitor would encounter before reaching the Mars Grill. Right now all you have is the Coke can display right before you reach the mess hall.

I think the education part of the process falls short if you wait until visitors to the museum are already in line to eat lunch. If you haven't already planted the seed in their heads before they see the "Young Sandwich" on the menu board, the choice of eating a corned beef sandwich is going to be solely based on the ingredients and not the storyline. If you were to poll the people standing in line at the Mars Grill on any given day and see if they knew about John Young eating the first corned beef sandwich in space, they would probably look at you funny. The general public isn't going to make the connection, and they are likely going to order something else. The Young Sandwich would lose money and waste menu board space in this scenario.

The alternative application would be to market this menu item towards the Space Campers themselves as part of the astronaut experience. You teach them about Food In Space while at Camp and it's in the log books. Space Camp seeks to recreate astronaut life, so why not incorporate the history into the menu the Campers dine on while at Space Camp? I remember in 1989 we had one meal where all we got was real Shuttle space food in the actual containers complete with straws. I was 13 at the time and I thought this was awesome. I knew about the John Young story at this time too and I would have appreciated this type of attention to detail on the part of the Space Camp meal planning staff.

So to sum up: Young Sandwich marketed to museum visitors = waste of time and money. Young Sandwich marketed to Space Campers = cool.

Should there be a Constellation "Turkey" sandwich?

I agree with SpaceCanada! The idea of having a more realistic astronaut food selection would be marvelous.  We currently serve Tang in the cafeteria.  When I came as a camper we had an astronaut meal with juice packets and candy coated chocolates… yummy!

Digger, you simply don’t understand how important the corned beef sandwich is to the youngest here at camp.  John Young and Gus Grissom embraced their craving for a stale, crusty, almost rotten corned beef sandwich in 1965.  They are heroes in the sandwich world! 

Finally Hotdog... Don't be a sandwich hater or I will send Joey Tribbiani to beat you up! Every sandwich should be a marketing sandwich. Every chance to make a unique experience is a chance to keep space flight in the hearts and minds of the general public. We have a great opportunity to keep the dream alive through corned beef! Don't get stuck in the nuts and bolts of marketing the Young Sandwich just think of the delicious memories that can be made. 

And now you take the anger and frustration that come with an illogical argument and an ill-conceived movement and take it out on hotdog. Why? Is it because the points made are both practical and logical? Or is it because a hotdog on the menu would destroy corned beef sandwich sales?

Which spaceflight featured a hotdog? Who cares, I’m hungry and will take two with relish.

I can’t wait to read the evals when “hotdog Thursdays” change over to “Corned Beef Thursdays”.
The “youngest here at camp” should love that.

Digger! I am not taking my anger out on Hotdog. However, hot dogs on the menu isn't a bad idea as long as it is served with the right sauce. Astronaut friend Don Thomas took Tony Packo Hot Dog Sauce STS-83. Also, hot dogs have a German background. Which so does the U.S. Space program. It has great German scientist in its background. But the point is not to honor a hot dog, because we already have a hot dogs on the cafeteria menu and the Rocket City Grill menu.

The point is if we are going to name sandwiches after astronauts, Gus Grissom or John Young should be honored with a corned beef sandwich. Yes, it was Gemini 3 and not it didn't happen in the Mercury program, but it did happen. We can't forget history!!!

Next Wednesday (Nov 23 @ 1130am) will be declared Corned Beef Wednesday when we occupy the public side of the cafeteria! We Want Corned Beef will be echoing through the center!

now that coke is involved in the cafe and are changing the name to the mars cafe maybe you could get them to add the sandwich

I'm hoping they add one of those 120 brand of Coke machines like they have at Firehouse Subs!!!

street wrote:I'm hoping they add one of those 120 brand of Coke machines like they have at Firehouse Subs!!!

according to the coke website they do

celticcowboy wrote:

street wrote:I'm hoping they add one of those 120 brand of Coke machines like they have at Firehouse Subs!!!

according to the coke website they do

According to the cafeteria manager they won't.

street wrote:

celticcowboy wrote:

street wrote:I'm hoping they add one of those 120 brand of Coke machines like they have at Firehouse Subs!!!

according to the coke website they do

According to the cafeteria manager they won't.

sad day

celticcowboy wrote:

street wrote:

celticcowboy wrote: according to the coke website they do

According to the cafeteria manager they won't.

sad day

Actually, that may be better. While the big machines are fun and give you lots of options, they only really work in low traffic areas. There are too many choices and, especially if people aren't familiar with them, it takes much longer for a single person to get a beverage. That can lead to long lines, especially with big groups coming through all at once.

I love the freestyle machines! They will be in everyone's home someday. I hope!