Microgravity Coffee Cup

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."

Comments

Don Pettit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Don Pettit

[JWSmythe]

    This is an excellent demonstration of why we need to further our space travel. It may seem trivial, but to get real advancements in space require people there. Theory is nice and all, but there's so much to learn from practice.

    A better example of what I'm saying is thrust. There are plenty of people on the ground theorizing about the bigger and better thrust systems. There are some neat ideas. People would be able to work through them faster by actually being there, and not only doing the specified projects, but their personal pet projects. For example, someone may discover that a windmill style device for turning solar winds into usable energy, and cosmic could be converted into some usable fuel.

    A cup is something. It's an example of what can be done from interest or necessity. Something that we're rapidly abandoning, as we watch manned space travel dwindle down to nothing.

Re:Don Pettit

[JWSmythe]

    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. :)
   

Re:Don Pettit

[Sperbels]

Yes, let's toss families out of their houses, because hey, space cups.

What? You think that money spent on NASA is toss into a spaceship and blasted into space never to be seen again? No, that money is going right back into businesses here on earth, and back into people's pockets. And we have a cutting edge aerospace industry that makes those robotic probes possible. It's produces something useful. Banks do fine on their own. They're simply wringing money out of the American tax payer because they can simply buy the right people to make it legal. NASA puts men on the fucking moon when we give them money. When we give money to banks they create economic disasters and a handful of really rich guys.

that's great

[YesIAmAScript]

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.

Coincidentally

[Kell Bengal]

This is also how manoeuvering thruster fuel tanks work, so that engines in microgravity get a continuous flow of fuel without need for ullage motors.

6 astronauts, 1 cup.

[Vandil X]

Rule 34, baby.

Re:6 astronauts, 1 cup.

[Dyinobal]

You did not...See this is why we can't have nice things people! This is why we can't have nice things.

A Matter of Timing

[MacGyver2210]

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)

Re:Not just capillary action.

[nadaou]

capillary action is a manifestation of surface tension

Re:Not just capillary action.

[nadaou]

I said it was a manifestation of it, not that the two were equivalent terms.

I highly recommend the MIT video series by Asher Shapiro on the subject:

http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html

"Surface Tension in Fluid Mechanics"

the videos are excellent (and that's a big understatement), but if you are in a hurry just have a look at the section talking about contact angles in the film notes: http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf/04STFM.pdf