How Vickie Kloeris ’78 fed astronauts and fuels Aggies

Vickie Kloeris ’78 grew up in Texas City and came to Aggieland leaning toward a career in medicine. While registering for her final semester as a microbiology major, she was short one elective hour to graduate. Against advice to take an easier class, she registered for a four-hour food microbiology course in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Food Science and Technology.

That elective class changed everything. It opened her eyes to how microbiology could be applied to food science. She followed that passion to where it led: a master’s in food science, research in the Kleberg Animal and Food Sciences Center’s seafood technology lab and, eventually, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where she spent her career defining what astronauts eat.

We caught up with the Aggie whose path took her from a food science technology lab in Aggieland to an out-of-this-world 34 year career as a NASA food scientist.

How did taking a food science elective turn into a career at NASA?

After my master’s, I stayed a year on a funded project on campus. At the end of that year, I married and moved to Galveston where my husband was a resident in family medicine. I spent the next two years doing cell culture research work in a lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

When his residency ended, I got my first food science job at a hospital in Houston managing food quality and safety in their cook-chill food plant that produced food for five area hospitals.

I began attending the local meetings of the Institute of Food Technologists, IFT, and met food scientists from NASA’s Johnson Space Center. I was intrigued about the application of food science to the space program, and I told them to call if a position opened. About two years later, they did. I joined the Johnson Space Center food lab in 1985 as a contractor, and in 1989 became a civil servant, managing the Space Shuttle food program.

What would surprise people about food in space?

The variety. The International Space Station menu includes nearly 200 foods and beverages. Every item is shelf-stable because there are no refrigerators or freezers for food. Early design work showed the power on the station was needed to support research freezers, not food storage, so the menu had to succeed without refrigeration. That constraint shaped everything from packaging to preparation.

How did the food program evolve during your time on the job?

At first, we relied on commercial items and military rations, which were high in sodium. That was fine on short shuttle flights, but for missions lasting months, high sodium raised concerns for bone loss, which occurs in microgravity and can be made worse by a high salt diet. We shifted from selecting off-the-shelf products to developing our own thermostabilized and freeze-dried foods with less salt that still tasted familiar.

That pivot moved us into true product development. It became the most interesting part of my work because we were inventing solutions for a place with no kitchen and very little power, then seeing crews enjoy the results.

What were some crew favorites that earned a permanent spot?

Freeze-dried shrimp cocktail with a tomato-based sauce that contained horseradish. Fluid shifts in early flight can make people feel congested, and that horseradish kick cut through it. I remember Peggy Whitson did not like the dish, but always packed it to trade because other crewmates loved it.

For dessert, a thermostabilized cherry blueberry cobbler in a pouch became an early hit. Long stays needed warm desserts to help boost morale. Crews could taste the crust even if it was not oven crisp. Originally, we produced it only for the long duration ISS crews, but shuttle crews wanted it too, so we scaled up faster than planned.

You lived inside a sealed habitat for 91 days. What did that test involve?

Johnson Space Center ran a series of chamber studies to test air and water recycling for space station life. Earlier crews did 15, 30 and 60 days while my team supplied flight food. For the final run, the center planned a 90-day test with a handover between two four-person crews to mimic how station crews overlap. They needed a science officer, so I volunteered.

Partway in, the center director decided to set a new closed-chamber record. The Apollo-era mark was 90 days, so our single crew stayed 91 days. We ran about 13 studies, logged what we ate, tested methods for diet records and sampled surfaces to track how contamination built up in a closed space.

We also helped develop exercise protocols for long missions. The chamber had a treadmill and an exercise bike. Physiologists monitored our data to tune aerobic and resistive work to the right levels.

All air and water were recycled, including purified drinking water that returned a few days after it left the crew. The best part? Two of my crewmates were fellow Aggies.

What is your most memorable story from your time at NASA?

Our food lab often hosted visitors. We would pause the day’s work, set up tastings and walk guests through how crews eat in orbit. One morning, the visitors were the “Apollo 13” film team. We hosted a space food breakfast for Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, who brought one of his daughters and Jim Lovell, along with two current astronauts. Lovell said the meal was great, which made the astronauts smile because they knew how far the food had come since the Apollo era.

Tom Hanks stepped up, put a foot on the table and pointed out he was wearing his Forrest Gump tennis shoes. We sometimes grumbled about events like that pulling us from our work, but it was fun to open the lab and show what space meals look like in real life.

Tell us about your book, ‘Space Bites.’

I wanted to honor my first boss at NASA and show students that food science is a real, tangible career path. People often think NASA is only astronauts and engineers, but it takes many kinds of talent to run a mission.

All profits from my book support food science scholarships at Texas A&M University and through the Institute of Food Technologists. I also serve on the Department of Food Science and Technology’s advisory committee and visit campus often.

The book has given me the opportunity to speak with students about how to get started. I point them to labs that connect class to real problems, local sections of the Institute of Food Technologists, and internships where they can see safety, processing and sensory work up close. It is a joy to meet the next generation who will carry the field forward.