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.

A part of these instruction is thus labeled High Altitude Cooking Instructions. It is unclear if this is the package with the dish, or if it is a board placed on the wall of the kitchen (of maybe some kind of vehicle, maybe a space capsule).

At the top there are a part of these instructions that can only partly be seen; presumably, these are the "sea level" instructions mentioned later. What can be seen for sure is

remove fro

for 3 minutes before serving

A qualified guess is that it says

remove from heat ...

But as nothing above this is visible, it is impossible to tell what it is that should be cooked. Below follows the separate High Altitude version, which list instructions for three different heights above sea level.

While the first two sections are reasonable accommodations, given the lower boiling point of water under less presure, for altitudes of 3,500-6,500 ft (1-2 km) and 6,500-9,500 ft (2-3 km), the instructions - as is typical for xkcd - soon veer into absurdity.

At an altitude of 250,000-450,000 ft (approximately 76-137 km), 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".

In this range of altitudes, you are highly likely to actively be either on the way down or, perhaps, still on the way up to space; cooking shouldn't be your primary concern in either case. The air-launched X-15, as did the later SpaceShipOne, ultimately 'flew' at around 350,000 ft, though (as with rockets, re-entry capsules or projectiles) there is no real capability to loiter at these altitudes, being well above even the unmanned balloon-flight record or that of any sustained level flight. And only in the latter might you even expect to be a passenger, not too busy to enjoy a light pre-prepared snack — already cooked, as necessary, at ground level.

Once back on the ground it tells you to use the Sea level cooking instructions. These are most likely the one one that is written on the top part of the comic.

The title text goes a step further and assumes that the user is in orbit - specifically, on the International Space Station at an altitude of 1,300,000-1,400,000 (396-426 km) (The ISS is between 413-422 km above Earth's surface). 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. Even if the pressure is one atmosphere, cooking with boiling water in a microgravity environment (as one might experience on a free-falling space station) is likely not the best of ideas, so better ask someone for directions.

Interestingly, just below the 1,300,000 feet limit, you may instead be able to ask a Taikonaut how to use their microwave or recently installed air-fryer.

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

[Two notes, of black writing on white background, are printed upon an item of grey packaging that is shown in closeup, slightly inclined and rotated within the comic panel. Only the latter parts of the top note are visible — because of the slant, only the first few characters of the penultimate line, and the entire final line of text, can be read. The bottom note is fully visible, as the bottom of the board is all within view.]

[The readable part of the top note's two lines:]

Remove fro...

for 3 minutes before serving.

[The bottom note:]

High altitude cooking instructions:

3,500-6,500 ft: Add ½ cup water, increase cook time to 12 minutes

6,500-9,500 ft: Add 1¼ 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)

I don't think Randall did it deliberately, but from a mere five km below his tidily rounded-by-feet "ask in the ISS" range (30km allocated, within which the ISS normally only uses 9 km, apogee to perigee) you'd find the Chinese space station (never more than 10 km below 1.3 Mft, and at least 21 km above the 1.2 Mft level, if you'll excuse my unusual mixing of units!). And they quite recently showcased the cooking skills with their new air-fryer, as many space-obsessives (like I might be) might recall... Perhaps that was at the back of his mind, but I can't actually imagine that he took conscious inspiration from that and then 'refused' to in any way acknowledge it (even in parody). At most, a totally forgotten bit of info that trickled into the spark for this. The core fact, of which, I've just made a note of in the explanation. But this is by way of an expanded note of how near he was to either having to acknowledge Tiangong or else have many pedants pointedly pointing out a potential inaccuracy/omission... ;) 82.132.244.242 18:08, 30 December 2025 (UTC)
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