What you see above you is the most expensive sandwich in the world, clocking in at a cost of $2.8million. It might just look like a BLT, but it’s actually designed by award winning Michelin starred chef Heston Blumenthal. Still, that can’t be enough to jack the price up that much can it?

No, the actual reason that it’s so expensive is because it’s been designed by British astronaut Tim Peake, who’s currently serving at the International Space Station and the cost of the sandwich factors in the cost of the fuel that it takes to get it to him. I know that’s a bit of a cop-out but it still makes it the most expensive sandwich in the world. Or the orbit of the world.

Blumenthal explains that the pernickety nature of designing food for space jacked up the price too because he had to submit it several times before it was cleared by the various space agencies out there:

Featured Image VIA

Image VIA 

Space food is very, very controlled.

All this red tape! You’ve got to get [each dish] past the UK Space Agency. Then the European Space Agency. Then Nasa.

And the people in these organisations who are involved with food, they’re… they’re engineers – they’re not chefs.

They consider food to be fuel, basically. A lot of freeze-dried stuff. Tins. Pouches.

I was shown these packets from the ISS [International Space Station] with big Russian writing on the front. Stuff that looked like you shouldn’t be putting it in your body at all.

Geez. Living in space sounds like a real drag. Although I suppose as well as getting to experience something that pretty much nobody else in the world ever will, you can also say you ate the world’s most expensive sandwich too.

Maybe there are some perks to it, but I think I would rather stick around on Earth. Here are a bunch of awesome vintage NASA photos in case you still harbour dreams of making it up there.