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JAXA Prepares To Try Making Whiskey In Space
schwit1 writes: An experiment to test how whiskey ages in weightlessness is about to begin on ISS: "H-II Transfer Vehicle No. 5, commonly known as "Kounotori5" or HTV5, was launched on Wednesday from JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center carrying alcohol beverages produced by Suntory to the Japanese Experiment Module aboard the International Space Station, where experiments on the "development of mellowness" will be conducted for a period of about one year in Group 1 and for two or more years (undecided) in Group 2." Don't worry, the astronauts on ISS won't be getting drunk. After the test period is complete the samples will then returned to Earth, untasted, where they will then be compared with control samples.
before NASA got into the Moonshine business. Astronaut Jim Bob was quoted as "I'd like to see those damned revenuers catch me here".
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
grow better weed in space?
Rick B.
Good to know they're not wasting time and money on trivial things that won't benefit the human race in any meaningful way.
Next up: can ants be trained to sort tiny screws in space?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
to conduct testing on the effects of alcohol on the human body while weightless!
Well... Can you come up with a better excuse...err.. reason to sample some of this before it leaves orbit?
"A mind reader? That sounds like sci fi." "Honey, we live on a space ship"
Was the author drinking, whiskey when they titled this submission
I would think so, given that they are shipping already created whiskey up there to sit in zero G... This is about aging booze in zero-G, not creating it there. Having toured a distillery, I can tell you gravity is a very required component in fractional distillation... And during aging gravity helps move the alcohol inside the barrel, via convection.
The title really had me thinking about how you do fractional distillation when there's really no force separating liquid from vapor. Maybe you could use a laser or concentrated sunlight to heat the outside edge of a floating glob of wort and draw the vapor off with vacuum device... I don't think heating the whole mess to boiling would be very productive.
One interesting thing about getting out of a gravity well is everything we ever did before has to be adjusted for the lack of this pull we have been tied to forever. Maybe new alloys could be formed, or other chemical reactions might produce altered results, all from the lack of having a separating force missing from the process.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
It's valuable technology spinoffs like this zero-g whiskey that justify the taxpayers shelling out over $100B on the ISS.
If it weren't for our robust support of manned space flight, mankind might never get the benefits of zero-g wiskey, and that would be a shame.
You are all, cows. Cows, say moo. MOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOO! Moo, cows, moo. Moo say, the cows. YOU, COWS!!
Moocow man meets the Golden Girls
Thank you for being a cow,
Feeding everyone from then to now,
You taste real good, boiled or broiled you're a tasty treat,
And if we held a barby
and cooked you up so carefully,
You would see the biggest burps would come from me,
and then all my guests would say,
Thank you for being a cow.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Well, for maost everything that we use gravity for, a centrifuge can do the job better. It's just that we have free gravity everywhere on earth, so building centrifuges isn't cost-effective unless gravity just isn't up to the task. In space, well, suddenly centrifuges have a lot more to offer. Which is why the traditional science fiction space station spins.
Where things get interesting is, as you point out, exploring what's possible in freefall.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.