The First Currency of Space Travel

What will used as money in a future space economy?

That question may be too broad, because the space economy already covers a lot of economic activities on Earth, where the money used in transactions is the very familiar currencies that nations have been using for decades, if not centuries. What we’re really curious about is what will the people to travel to space use for money.

Space travel presents unique challenges because getting to space is costly. Space travelers have to bring nearly everything they need with them, which imposes limits on what they can use as money. Whatever they might use as money has to be both compact and lightweight, or else it will be difficult to justify the expense of transporting it into space. It would also have to be sufficiently durable because it has to endure in the space traveller’s environment. Finally, it will also have to be something on which they place value, otherwise it would not be worth either storing or exchanging in trades with others.

So what will space travelers use as their currency? If we go by the following excerpt from Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s 2023 book A City on Mars telling the story of the first ever space currency, it probably won’t be anything like what you might ever have expected:

The environment of space also reportedly makes food taste less flavorful. This may be a result of the fluid shift creating sinus pressure similar to a cold, or it may be that in zero gravity smells don’t waft up into your nose, or it may be something about the artificial atmosphere. Whatever the reason, astronauts often lust for piquant condiments, such as salt, pepper, Tabasco, and mayonnaise. And, of course, taco sauce. Salty, zesty taco sauce is so beloved by astronauts that for about a week in 1991 it became the first form of currency specific to outer space. On shuttle flight STS-40, taco sauce went on everything. Pilot Sid Gutierrez recalled, “Although I didn’t do it myself, I observed crewmates putting taco sauce on Rice Krispies in the morning.” Around day 8, STS-40′s Commander Bryan O’Connor realized the crew’s rate of taco sauce consumption would soon outstrip the taco sauce supply. According to Gutierrez, the commander “secured all the remaining taco sauce and divided it equally among the crew members. Thereafter taco sauce became the medium of exchange. For example, if it was your turn to clean the latrine, you could pay someone a taco sauce or two to do it for you.”

Shopping on Amazon, you can buy a quantity of 200 0.32-ounce single serve packets of taco sauce for $29.99 at this writing, or about six cents per packet. Now, think about how much you would pay someone to clean your bathroom on Earth because that’s the equivalent of how valuable a single six-cent packet of taco sauce became in space.

Previously on Political Calculations

• Mars GDP as New Plans in Work to Create Its Export Economy
• The Birth of the Martian Economy
• The Tomato Soup Standard

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: “An image of a banknote featuring an astronaut in space“.