14 DAY TRIAL // After decades of research into what type of drinks would best benefit astronauts aboard the International Space Station, as well as on other voyages to space, the American space agency NASA has finally made available such a product on the market, for the average consumer. Derived from the complex soda that astronauts drink while away from Earth, the new, electrolyte-based product will be named “The Right Stuff,” Space informs. It is, in fact, not your average bubbly soda, but a concentrated liquid, which interacts with water to regain its properties and ensure perfect hydration.
Boulder, Colorado-based Wellness Brands Inc. is the company that was awarded the license for producing the commercial version of the product, after experts at NASA's Ames Research Center, in Moffett Field, California, worked on it for the better part of the last 15 years. “We developed the hydration formula to perform optimally under the most extreme conditions. The health of our highly trained astronauts was paramount,” former Ames research scientist John Greenleaf, who is also the original inventor of the formula, explained in a recent statement.
“With all that Americans and the government have invested in the space program and our astronauts, this is one clear way to protect and maximize that investment,” he added. When compared with products containing carbohydrates, or with simple water, the new energy drink had the ability to boost endurance by an average of 20 percent, which was a lot of extra energy, its creators said. They also reminded the fact that it had been originally created for astronauts handling extreme G forces, performing demanding spacewalks, and living in microgravity for up to six months.
The drink is a mix of sodium chloride (sea salt) and sodium citrate, which give it isotonic properties. When you play sports for extended periods of time, sweat eliminates large amounts of water from your body, which in turns causes the electrolyte balance inside the cells to be upset. What the new energy drink does is simply restore it to its original “glory” in a very short amount of time, and give you the ability to continue playing on back-up energy that you wouldn't have otherwise had.
No sugar or carbohydrates had been used in the new product, the President and CEO of Wellness Brands, David Belaga, told Space. These compounds interfere with the body's natural electrolyte absorption processes, and can prevent many of the beneficial effects that The Right Stuff has. In its astronaut version, the product is naturally salty, with “about same level of sodium as a cup of chicken noodle soup.” For public consumption, the zero-calorie artificial sweetener sucralose was added.