In Your Fridge: Soda, Purple Stuff, Sunny D, and now NASA's The Right Stuff
Posted 06.05.2009 at 2:22 pm
12 Comments
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Space Age Electrolytes
Tom Wolfe dumps a cooler of this over his head after completing a novel
Who do you trust with your thirst mutilating needs, an athlete or a rocket scientist? Well, NASA is hoping that you’re sick of watching basketball players hock sports drinks. Instead, they're hoping you'll turn to their new product, The Right Stuff, for all your extreme hydration needs. It's got what astronauts crave.
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Technology, Dan Smith, astronauts, electrolytes, energy drinks, nasa, nasa scientists, Space, sports drinksWe wouldn't have believed it either except for an official NASA press release on the creation of a drink promising results "under the most extreme conditions." Delivering “20% more endurance than other sports drinks” (whatever that really means), the product claims to be perfect for the average person suffering from exercise, heat exposure, altitude sickness, microgravity, and even re-entry dehydration. Boasting the optimal isotonic concentration of electrolytes and carbohydrates the drink claims to provide superior performance on the ground, up in the air, and even further out. No need to worry about your intra- and extra-cellular fluid levels after one “single-serve vial” of The Right Stuff. Perhaps drinking enough will help prevent the ravages of space on an astronaut’s body.
Currently, the only flavors are Citrus Blend, Wild Berry, and Tom-Wolfe-white-suit-matching Unflavored. Hopefully this will do better than NASA’s last foray into the drink market with Tang. And if it is so powerful, maybe it can revitalize their space ice cream division by hydrating those crunchy pucks into something edible.
[NASA Press Release via Gizmodo]
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I liked tang... I could eat that stuff strait. Of course, that was more dehydrating than hydrating, but it was tasty.
tang was a marketing marvel; i mean, who doesn't like a little tang?
but the right stuff? a bit too cheeky, methinks
Who isn't going to think that "The Right Stuff" is a little bit pompous.
haha the thrist mutilator..
I'm guessing Bill 'Spaceman' Lee, author of 'The Wrong Stuff', won't be their first athlete spokesman....
Haha Idiocracy, the thirst mutilator.
For some reason I don't like the idea of NASA selling products to the public. They should be liscensing with businesses not becoming one. Plus, why market a drink only to athletes and as a remedy for dehydration? What about the rest of the liquid drinking population. Coming out with a products whose only market is already dominated by Gatorade does not sound like the beginnings of a succesful business venture.
Water? You mean the stuff in the toilet?
re:bdhoro87
Did you read the press release in the link provided in the story?? I think not. In the second paragraph of the press release it clearly states that they've licensed the patent to Wellness Brands Inc, of Boulder, CO.
General Foods developed Tang in 1957, and it has been on supermarket shelves since 1959.
In 1962, when astronaut John Glenn performed eating experiments in orbit, Tang was selected for the menu.
www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinfaq.htm#spinfaq12
Yea no I didn't read it haha you're right.
To tell you the truth, I do think NASA would be better fit to create a formulation drink for the average person rather than sports physicians. The "sports drinks" are designed for people who exert their bodies to extremes, whereas astronauts are people who basically do ordinary work in extreme conditions. The average person is someone who does ordinary work in, well, ordinary conditions.
On the other hand, I doubt this will be successful because NASA just doesn't have the brand name pull in the post-Space Age society - @bdhoro87, NASA is a brand name, or at least was one. In the '80s, you had SpaceCamp, you had all sorts of products advertised as being used by the astronauts, and space exploration was all the rage. Nowadays, NASA, astronauts, and space exploration just aren't the watercooler topics that they were 20 years ago.
I hope this product sells well, because it looks like a good quality product. But it's going to take something other than advertising about NASA the astronauts to do it.
I think NASA still has a strong brand name that people like and respect. I'm still against them functioning as a business, which government agencies are notoriously bad at.