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Space Coffee, Just the Way You Like It

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-to-the-last-floating-drop dept.

Zothecula writes "Since the early days of space travel, a consistent complaint has been lousy coffee. Now a group of freshman engineering students at Rice University have developed a simple approach to alleviating this problem. From the article: 'The challenge was to develop a method and equipment that allows astronauts to add liquid ingredients (cream, sweetener, and lemon juice) from a foil package to another that contains black coffee or tea. No spills in microgravity can be allowed, as these have a tendency to migrate into equipment and cause faults. The Rice freshmen designed their system around the existing black coffee pouches. NASA supplied them two-ply heat sealed pouches to hold the sugar syrup and cream. The beverage and condiment pouches all have a septum which allows access to their contents without allowing any of the liquid contents to escape.'"

4 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Customize? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given the expense of shipping people and supplies into orbit, and the fact that the people you are going to be shipping are generally known in advance, wouldn't it be substantially simpler just to ask them for their preferred beverage mixture and seal that in a single pouch?

    This isn't some sort of commercial aviation scenario, where the catering supplier has to do an approximate match against the uncertain tastes of 250 random passengers, which makes modular food much more sensible; or an MRE-type scenario where they have to stamp out a zillion of them and ship them wherever, so it just isn't practical to ensure that Pvt. SomeGuy gets exactly the combination he wants assembled at the factory and supply-chained out to him at firebase nowhere 18 months from now...

    1. Re:Customize? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bingo!

      Everyone seems to be hung up on coffee, as though that were the ONLY liquid that might ever need to be mixed with another ingredient in zero gravity.

      Hello, everyone! The same methods used to add cream to coffee will likely work in scientific experiments, or mixing epoxy cements, or, preparing an acid solution, or - just about anything that requires two ingredients to be mixed.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Re:just educate the astronauts by rmdingler · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Agreed. In fact, the only difference between good coffee and bad coffee is about two hours first thing in the morning.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  3. Re:just educate the astronauts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'll drink coffee however the fuck I want to. Humans discovered a long time ago that combining different ingredients makes things taste different.. and taste is subjective. Some people just don't like it black, some do.