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Food

NASA's New Cups Will Change the Way Astronauts Drink in Space

Astronauts typically drink through straws, from bags filled with everything from water to coffee to cocoa. But a new cup developed by NASA dubbed the “Capillary Beverage Experiment” makes use of the “combined effects of surface tension, wetting, and...
Photo courtesy of NASA Johnson

Since illustrators and writers began dreaming up life in space decades ago, we've envisioned humanity's future beyond Earth as one surrounded by everyday technical elegance. Spaceships glide swiftly and silently through the infinite deep toward exotic planets while passengers relax in modernist white-walled interiors, where meals arrive at the push of a button and Bach pipes softly through the ship intercom.

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The reality, though, is that the International Space Station looks a bit more Mad Max than Star Trek, and astronauts have to manage without many of the conveniences we take for granted on terra firma, like flushing toilets. Now, however, NASA is moving astronauts one step closer to our futurist dreams (and dignity) with specially designed cups that allow space travelers to drink without straws.

READ: You Can Now Eat Russian Space Food—But Do You Want to?

A new cup developed by NASA dubbed the "Capillary Beverage Experiment" makes use of the "combined effects of surface tension, wetting, and cup shape" to create an astronaut-friendly cup that functions similarly to a normal cup. Astronauts place their lips on the cup's edge and can slurp liquid without risk of the liquid floating away, as things do in zero gravity, or, to be more scientific, "micro gravity."

Astronauts typically drink through straws, from bags filled with everything from water to coffee to cocoa.

And, thankfully, since a spill in space isn't just a paper towel affair, the adult sippy cup works well. A video filmed on the International Space Station shows astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren drinking from the cups and demonstrating the power of surface tension as they toss the vessels full of hot coffee back and forth to one another, drink from the cups while doing flips in mid air, and at one point let two full cups collide. No liquid is spilled.

While astronauts are no doubt thankful for a new drinking vessel, the sippy cup is serving a double purpose as an exploration of fluid dynamics in space. What NASA learns from the Capillary Beverage Experiment will be used for advancing systems that involve fluid dynamics on future spacecrafts' dishware and more.

READ: The World's Best Whisky Is Being Sent to the Space Station

The new cup allows astronauts to properly enjoy the espresso from their new espresso machine, and, who knows—maybe they'll have the chance to crack into some of the space-aged whisky (Ardbeg, and later a selection of Suntory whiskies) they have lugged around. The Scotch distiller Ballantine's has already designed an elegant glass for drinking whisky in space, but it hasn't yet made the trek up to the station. It's reassuring to know that if NASA ever lifts its ban on drinking in space, astronauts won't have to suck single malt Scotch through a straw. (The Russians have a more lax policy.)

The speed at which we've moved into the space age might not be as great as early would-be cosmonauts imagined, but we're getting there. Space food has come a long way since space travel popularized Tang, which, to this day, remains a perfectly suitable beverage for NASA's new cup.