In the 1960's good old NASA asked the US Army's Natick Laboratories to develop ice cream that could be eaten in space. They came up with the idea of freeze drying it which results in a long life, lite ready to eat treat.

Astronauts Wally Schirra, Don Eisele, and Walter Cunningham took the freeze-dried ice cream into space in 1968 on Apollo 7 when they tested the Earth orbit of the Apollo Command Module in preparation for the Moon Landing. This was the only recorded use of Freeze dried ice cream in NASA missions.

Unfortunately, to overcome the issue of ice cream 'crumbs' floating about in zero gravity conditions, they had to coat the freeze dried ice cream in a gel and they started by using an ice cream almost devoid of flavour. Hmm - Maybe that is why it wasn't that popular!

Fortunately the ingredients, preparation, flavouring (and absence of gel!) means our freeze dried ice cream is much, much tastier than those poor guys had to suffer.

In the US there are companies selling what they call "Astronaut food". "Astronaut ice cream" or "Space Food" - All of which are gel-less freeze dried ice cream and are sold at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and the like.