[109] "Welcome Aboard Flight 1 to London' Our flight time today will be 3 hours, and, immediately after takeoff, we will be offering cocktails and dinner. Included in your choice this evening, may we suggest a dehydrated, low-residue, easily disposable, unappetizing, and misshapen meal. Water guns on request. " What's wrong with that ? If it is good enough for the astronauts, is it not good enough for us in the airline industry ?
How is the airline really different from space travel ? It doesn't have a gravity problem it is not in a zero-G situation. There are not the particularly long missions which the astronauts face, but in some ways there really is no difference. We of the airlines must also design our systems with space in mind. I am not talking about astronomical space; I'm talking about space in a capsule or space in an aircraft. We certainly must take into consideration weight and packaging and must utilize research in all possible fields. Let us look at the airline. What is our immediate future and how can we benefit future food systems whether they be weightwatcher or weightless ?
Professor Buck mentioned in great detail some of our prejudices, and I will not linger on these except to say that food is indeed a creature comfort. "Creature comfort" is not my term but one that has been used by psychologists to tell us that people and their habits cannot change as quickly as can their technology. We would like to throw our prejudices out of the window and say that we are free of them, but we cannot. So we must live with them, try to bring favorable ones into our everyday lives, and, in that way, hopefully add Professor Buck's "rec" (relaxation, entertainment, and comfort).
One of the basic differences between the airlines and space travel is that, at least at this stage, the airlines are selling something, and we need to pamper people in order to sell tickets. What kind of creature comforts can we provide ? I shall discuss this from the viewpoint of the 747's. How many seats do you suppose that opening announcement I made would sell ? None. Food is not something that is just eaten. It's also seen, and it's felt, and it's heard. It is a textured item and we are used to it in its current earthbound form.
Let me tell you a little about Pan Am. We started producing frozen food in 1950. We were forced into production by an operational need of moving meals from New York to Karachi or Beirut where the quality of food wasn't what we had hoped it to be. We've progressed beyond that now; last year we produced 11 000 000 meals in our two frozen-meal kitchens, at New York and San Francisco. We meet the volume demands and the demands of the latest technology. Many [110] people have said, "You have the big jets. How are you going to handle all those people on an individual basis ?" This is indeed a big problem.
Let us consider Kennedy International Airport alone because it is our largest station. In 1973 we plan to have at one time at one terminal building eight 707's and six 747's during a peak hour. This means we shall have about 3300 passengers per hour. It will indeed be difficult to cater to this large number.
We've found that the public doesn't really understand that the creature comforts are going to be vastly increased on this airplane. Seat spacing is going to be increased; the number of aisles is going to be increased. All the compartments are going to be color coded and segmented so that a passenger can get his baggage much quicker, he can board much quicker, and he can sit down much quicker. He will have space to put things. He won't find that his bag is 2 inches too large to shove under his seat and be told by the stewardess that he can't put it in the hatrack. All these things have been taken into consideration through the learning curve of our previous experiences.
We are dealing with the same things the space industry is. We are utilizing the polycarbonates (Lexan) in our galleys for light weight. Titanium is used in the engines. We are even considering plastic wine bottles which save 40 percent in space and weight. Tetrapak liquor seems unappetizing but the packaging geniuses make it an attractive and "entertaining" package.
The 747 will have six galleys, and we are going to feed 350 people at the same time. Each galley complex, of which there are three, has an average of 52 sq ft of galley, which is quite small. We shall have 9 ovens and 10 coffeemakers, and 15 000 pieces of equipment will go on and off each airplane at each transit. This is a logistic nightmare.
Think ahead to the time when volume will be a problem not with astronauts but with people, the general public, traveling between planets, to the Moon, and so forth. Granted that it is stargazing, but are we not really moving in the direction of volume ? Well, if there were ever any lesson to learn about volume, we are going to be learning it, and I hope not the hard way. The modular concept and containerization are here and are being used and, although these things are not of immediate importance to the Apollo program, they are lessons that I think will be of benefit eventually to your industry.
We find that people psychologically relate to airlines as in the Pavlov's dog experiment. They board an airplane in January and have chicken; then, a year later, after 364 days of meals, they board another airplane and have chicken again. What happens ? We are considered a chicken airline; they say we have nothing but chicken onboard. The problem is simple to identify but not so simple to solve. My budget this year for food and supplies alone is $ 43 000 000 and that is to be used not only for chicken but for all the foods we put aboard. At this point we use about 90 different entrees to try to satisfy the palate, and by the palate, as I mentioned before, we mean not only the mouth taste but also the texture, the sound, and the sight.
Another approach is that referred to as "demand" type food service. The same enclavement, so to speak, that the astronaut is faced with, i. e., being rigid in one seat for a long period of time, faces our passengers to a lesser degree. Take, for example, the 302 economy passengers in the 747. They are trapped and are a captive audience. We have been finding out through studies [111] that passengers do not necessarily want to eat when they are told to eat. They may not want to eat when the stewardess is ready to serve them, so we are creating what we call "demand" food service, i.e., a system to allow the passenger to eat when he wants to. It could also be called a snack service.
On the 747 on our Polar flight which goes from San Francisco to London, or from Seattle to London, or from Los Angeles to London, we will be serving at a full configuration 1000 meals in 12 hours. What kind of automatons are going to be able to do this ? What happens to the old chef ? What happens to the skilled worker ? Today, we have 3600 stewardesses. Can you imagine the degree of variance of food preparation if you were to hand them a recipe that started from scratch ? No, we must give them a convenience food that is foolproof. Our stewardesses are very well prepared but the same degrees of difference occur in those girls that occur in every one of us here in this room. Each will do things differently, so we must be sure that our technology designs foods that can be prepared by somebody who is not a culinary genius.
For this tremendous volume of frozen meals that we have been discussing, we must design basic sauces, of which there are about 6, and create up to 1100 variations through food flavorings, while maintaining the psychological presentation of the food and at the same time using some of the latest protein products. We want to increase the amount of protein that the passenger gets, because more and more people are becoming weight conscious and more and more people are becoming less active. So fish protein and basic sauces in a convenient prepackaged form will be used. Containerization will solve some of the logistic problems of frozen food. Then, as the volume increases, we will need lightweight, one-way, insulated shipping containers.
Some other products with which we are working include high-heat plastics, which provide food containers, or plates, that are disposable, lightweight, and low in cost and will withstand temperatures of up to 600° F. Also being considered is a high-heat, polyethelene, moisture-proof material which can be placed in a dry-heat environment (600° F).
In short, ladies and gentlemen, there necessarily must be many interfaces between your technology and our technology. Volume factors affect passenger travel, whether in the atmosphere or in space.