During a lunch break in April 1963, Sidney Schwartz of Grumman Aircraft's Human Factors System ran out to the supermarket. Normally, this would not be an unusual thing for a time-pressed engineer working on the Apollo lunar module. However, Schwartz was looking for something—and he wasn't sure exactly what it was. What he needed was one new ingredient for a foodstuff he had conceived of for use on spaceflights. To the bewilderment of co-workers, Schwartz was developing a structural material that could double as emergency rations. He dubbed the product ESM, for Edible Structural Material. Surprisingly, the Grumman Advanced Development staff had taken an interest in the concept.
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