Space Freezer

The problem with freezers here on Earth is that they don't go as cold as they might -- some microbes can still survive at kitchen freezer temperatures. Which is why you can't store, for example, frozen meats forever in your freezer. Eventually the stuff will putrefy, as I recently discovered when cleaning out my freezer.

Here's an idea: take a bag of mylar, with a few holes in it to allow it ventilation to space, and fill it with frozen meats and other goods. Cover it in a foil of aluminium or gold to protect it from solar radiation. Then put it in space. In the darkness of the bag, the food contained will soon reach within two or three degrees of absolute zero, and be thus protected from the effects of microbial deterioration.

There is of course the problem of retrieving your food, I suppose it could be contained in a small remote-guided satellite, equipped with a heat-shield, that would come down from orbit when you summoned it. I assume that to make it worthwhile you'd store your frozen foods in bulk and launch them cheaply with what comes out of that N-Prize mission.)

For long term space missions we could imagine seeding space -- for example the path between Mars and Earth -- with hundreds of small satellites filled with such bags of frozen foods. Then manned missions between Earth and Mars could forgo carrying all their food and water cargo onboard, picking up the resupply packages as they went. It would save on shipboard space and weight.