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Microgravity Coffee Cup

Posted by timothy on from the shattering-all-my-conceptions dept.

BuzzSkyline writes "Despite the fact that astronauts have been eating and drinking out of tubes for decades, it's actually possible to drink from an open-top cup in space. Astronaut Don Pettit recently downlinked a video that shows him slurping coffee from a cup he kludged out of plastic sheet. It appears to work pretty much like a cup on Earth, even in freefall aboard the International Space Station, thanks to capillary action."

5 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Don Pettit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don Pettit is both the smartest and craziest man I've ever met.
    He's built all sorts of crazy gadgets in space.

    Years ago he took the space station's vacuum cleaner into reverse and rode around on it, Slim Pickins style through the space station.
    He also smelts his own metals in a forge in his back yard to make various things.

    1. Re:Don Pettit by JWSmythe · · Score: 4, Interesting

          Don't confuse government spending with the worth of the projects. There have been an abundance of amazing technologies that have come about due to the space programs. We'd have even more if we had many generations of spacecraft, building upon known technology. From Mercury to the Shuttle, there were tremendous advancements. What would it be like if we had multiple generations of spacecraft, and real space based societies?

          Antarctica has a population in the thousands during the winter. Space? The most I could find was 13. That's not a huge population for a space faring population. That's a camping trip, without the woods. To put it in comparison, 0.0000002% of the world population was in space at the same time. Once.

          No one does fun little experiments like "What happens if you space a water balloon?". There are important things to know, and until more people are up there doing oddball experiments, we won't discover 'em.

          And, I'm all for spacing a water balloon. A thermite filled balloon launched towards the atmosphere should make a pretty light show. It might need to be a pretty big balloon. Lots of room to experiment. :)
         

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  2. that's great by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I didn't stop to think about the problem of getting the liquid to your mouth, I figured the hard part was getting it to go into and stay into the cup.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  3. A Matter of Timing by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you had a cup of coffee every morning on the Space Station, your heart would probably explode.

    (the sun 'rises' every ~90 minutes for the ISS)

    --
    If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
  4. Re:6 astronauts, 1 cup. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually you jest, but there is a video of two astro-naughties testing out which physical positions and acts would work in space... and NASA refuses to release the video(good thing IMHO) but basically doggy style was the only position that worked, since the guy could hold the girl's hips and thrust her that way. All other positions would require some special sleeping bag type solution where they would have handles on the inside.

    Of course this was done for scientific purposes... to see about future human reproduction... but still... kinda cool IMHO