Whirlpool Space Kitchen

From The Space Library

In early 1961 the Wright Air Development Division of the US Air Force Research and Development Command awarded a contract to the Whirlpool Corporation of St Joseph Michigan to design and build a kitchen which could be used aboard the proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

The kitchen was to be able to provide food and drinks to a crew of three astronauts for a 14-day mission. It would have been ten feet long and 7.5 feet in diameter.

The main requirements would have included a miniaturised refrigerator and freezer powered by fuel-cell. An oven with three compartments and a built-in 2.5 gallon water system.

The project was overseen by Howard Brehm at Whirlpool and was completed by April 1961. By the end of November the experimental space kitchen was on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In the spring of 1962 it was sent around the United States where it was put on display in various department stores.

Ultimately the Whirlpool Space Kitchen was shipped to England where it was used by movie director Stanley Kubrick in his movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Whirlpool would later be given the contract to build the kitchen for the Skylab space station.