Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is future Robert uh speaking on this
Speaker 1: past episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I just
Speaker 1: want to warn you in this episode, as at one
Speaker 1: point I refer to the I S. S. Presso machine
Speaker 1: as weighing four hundred pounds, I'm meant to say it
Speaker 1: weighs forty pounds. Well, that totally undercuts my reaction to it,
Speaker 1: so disregard all all considerations given thereafter. Alright, well that's
Speaker 1: all we had to say. So we're gonna jump back
Speaker 1: in the time machine and we'll chat to you again
Speaker 1: in a future episode. But continue to enjoy this past
Speaker 1: episode about coffee in space. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And before we got
Speaker 1: on Mike here, Robert and I were just talking about
Speaker 1: our favorite coffee cliches. What do you call those sayings,
Speaker 1: like sayings that people put on a T shirt or
Speaker 1: in a little meme or on a pillow or a
Speaker 1: key cha fob, Like you're talking about a little bumper
Speaker 1: sticker wisdom, aren't you. Yeah, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: word for that is it's not quotes, but the kinds
Speaker 1: of text you put on things in order to be witty,
Speaker 1: Like I like my coffee, like I like my men,
Speaker 1: And then there's some joke, yeah, sort of like, uh,
Speaker 1: I like my coffee, like I like my astronauts, bold
Speaker 1: and highly susceptible to cosmic radiation. I like my coffee
Speaker 1: like I like my men congested and with bone atrophy.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense to but but it we've failed,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't know. We haven't failed. But what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do as noble, we're trying to bring coffee and
Speaker 1: space together. And really that's been that's been a noble
Speaker 1: mission in space exploration in general for a while. How
Speaker 1: How are we going to enable our brave astronauts to
Speaker 1: drink coffee in space? This is an important subject, and
Speaker 1: I actually mean that it's not. This might be kind
Speaker 1: of kind of a niche topic maybe, but but stick
Speaker 1: around because coffee and space is more interesting than you
Speaker 1: might think, and it's more important than you might think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly we're gonna get into some into some
Speaker 1: cool physics here. Relate. Those are the fluid dynamics of
Speaker 1: liquids and uh and and heated liquids in microgravity. But
Speaker 1: I mean, bottom line, coffee in the experience of having
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee is a very important terrestrial practice.
Speaker 1: And as we go into space, uh it is it's
Speaker 1: it's good to have something like that to bring with us.
Speaker 1: It grounds us, It gives us a sense of calm,
Speaker 1: a sense of of normalcy in this highly dangerous environment. Robert,
Speaker 1: what do you think would happen if you were, at
Speaker 1: the same time asked to do something unusual, you had
Speaker 1: to like undertake a dangerous mission, and you were also
Speaker 1: deprived of coffee concurrent with that. Mmmm, well, I would
Speaker 1: have to have this. This does happen sometimes, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when it's when traveling. Sometimes, you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of stress comes up on traveling. So what I try
Speaker 1: and do is have some sort of like green tea
Speaker 1: pills on hand, you know, something where I can I
Speaker 1: can give myself some caffeine and and I'm not having
Speaker 1: to just chase down a bad cup of coffee in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere to get pills. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to judge that sounds sterile and perverted. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no pleasure in it, except it can help stave off,
Speaker 1: you know, a caffeine headache. It can help keep me
Speaker 1: awake if I'm driving, that sort of thing. And so
Speaker 1: if I was an outer space conceivably, you know, I
Speaker 1: imagine I could get by without the coffee. It provided
Speaker 1: that I had access to the green tea pills or
Speaker 1: you know, or whatever what other whatever kind of you know,
Speaker 1: additional stimuli they had up there on hand to keep
Speaker 1: me alert and focused. But coffee is more than just caffeine, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that caffeine is one of the main things
Speaker 1: about it. We like, we like it's drug effects, but
Speaker 1: coffee is an institution of human life in many cultures
Speaker 1: around the world. It's not just a chemical, but it's
Speaker 1: an important texture of life. Yeah, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: the drinking of the coffee and the but it's also
Speaker 1: the making of the coffee. Just the practice of making
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee for many people, um, myself included,
Speaker 1: like that is a part of the ritual you you
Speaker 1: you just it's part of your morning or your your
Speaker 1: afternoon whenever you you know, you have that at that
Speaker 1: essential cup. It's quiet, it's meditative. It makes me start
Speaker 1: to feel like I'm getting ready for the day. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you know. I think often
Speaker 1: we underestimate the power of simple physical rituals in preparing
Speaker 1: our mind space for for activities. Like people think they
Speaker 1: need coffee because they need caffeine in order to start
Speaker 1: getting work done, and that that is somewhat true. The
Speaker 1: caffeine does something, but you also need the process of
Speaker 1: the brewing and the drinking that doing those familiar motions
Speaker 1: gets you primed. Yeah, it's the you're engaging in the
Speaker 1: story too, like this is the story of the thing
Speaker 1: I must do to start working and uh And likewise,
Speaker 1: that's a whole other avenue to for many coffee drinkers
Speaker 1: like the story of the beans. And certainly, yes, they
Speaker 1: are varying degrees of quality and varying flavors for different
Speaker 1: different types of coffee beans and different preparation methods, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But we also get just so into the story off
Speaker 1: and it's like with with with the with with wine enthusiast, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some scientific studies that that kind of
Speaker 1: cast doubt onto what degree of wine enthusiasts can actually taste.
Speaker 1: Various differences in the uh, you know, the vintage that
Speaker 1: they're drinking. But I mean, if you put a label
Speaker 1: on wine that's a taste like seashells and sweet and low,
Speaker 1: people would be able to taste that, right. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but ultimately it's all about the story of that wine,
Speaker 1: and you're engaging with that story and it's bringing you value.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a and I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: wrong with that. And so there's there's that going on
Speaker 1: with coffee as well, And as we'll touch on later,
Speaker 1: there's a little of that in the story of coffee
Speaker 1: and space, you know, or Abert one of the things
Speaker 1: that you made me realizes that the reason we actually
Speaker 1: need coffee in space for real astronauts is the same
Speaker 1: reason there's always a scene of astronauts drinking coffee in
Speaker 1: sci fi movies about space. Oh yeah, yeah, we were
Speaker 1: we were sort of brainstorming about this, like what what films?
Speaker 1: What classic sci fi films, uh, you know have coffee
Speaker 1: drinking scenes. And there's you see it in Alien from
Speaker 1: seventy nine, you see it in a silent running from
Speaker 1: seventy two two thousand and one of Space Odyssey. There's
Speaker 1: stally forgotten. Yeah, now I now I'm not so, I
Speaker 1: don't remember. It's been a little while since I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I'm due for a reviewing. It's possible that they're they're
Speaker 1: they're drinking tea. I'm not sure which characters are are
Speaker 1: drinking in this particular scene, but maybe just scalding hot
Speaker 1: orange juice. But but t is very similar, of course,
Speaker 1: because the tea is also checking off the same boxes,
Speaker 1: the ritual, the you know, the hot brew that invigorates you, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Speaking of tea, we know that at least a certain
Speaker 1: Starfleet captain loves his oh gray hot. But do they
Speaker 1: drink coffee on the Inner Prize? Uh? They did, at
Speaker 1: least I found a screenshot from from Star Trek Voyager,
Speaker 1: So there's at least one scene with coffee. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're countless other examples of characters drinking some sort
Speaker 1: of coffee based beverage. Did the long Ones drink coffee
Speaker 1: in the expanse Um, Well, there is a lot of
Speaker 1: coffee drinking the in the expanse there's a particular high
Speaker 1: grade coffee machine on one of the main ships, and
Speaker 1: it's it's referenced a lot, and at one point it's
Speaker 1: broken and and and everybody is is rather upset about it.
Speaker 1: But this is a show that does at least value
Speaker 1: the the the engineering challenges involved with creating a proper
Speaker 1: coffee brewing device for a spaceship that's going to be
Speaker 1: going in and out of micro gravity. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's this scene from Event Horizon, Don't speak of
Speaker 1: It features some really tasteless jokes. Yeah yeah, but but
Speaker 1: even still, we see this trend continuing where you have characters,
Speaker 1: you know, in outer space, in this just unrelatable environment
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of the human population. You have
Speaker 1: them engaging and even more elaborate scenarios encountering aliens or
Speaker 1: demons from from the you know, the the other side
Speaker 1: of a wormhole. But there's if there's anything that we
Speaker 1: can relate to and what they're doing and what they
Speaker 1: want out of life, it's that cup of coffee. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a standard part of narrative theory that you have.
Speaker 1: If you want to tell an extraordinary story, you need
Speaker 1: to ground the extraordinary elements of the story and mundane things,
Speaker 1: things that make you feel familiar and comfortable, in order
Speaker 1: to accent the unfamiliarity of the strange parts of the story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember Berto Eco wrote an essay dealing with some
Speaker 1: of this, talking about coffee consumption in I think James
Speaker 1: Bond novels, as well as another spy series. What was
Speaker 1: the one that they made films of it with the
Speaker 1: Michael Caine. What was Michael Caine's spy character. I just
Speaker 1: looked it up. It's Harry Palmer. Yeah, that's the one.
Speaker 1: That's the one, so Hip Crest file. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: ideas you have, you have this these these spy characters
Speaker 1: and they're doing all this this crazy stuff. They're gonna
Speaker 1: have Harry Palms for some reason. But no matter what
Speaker 1: they're doing, you know, if they're wrestling giant squid or
Speaker 1: what have you, they're still drinking that coffee and that
Speaker 1: that serves as an anchoring point for the for our experience.
Speaker 1: A lot of horror and sci fi movies do this
Speaker 1: also with cigarettes. Coffee and cigarettes I think are especially
Speaker 1: useful consumables for this narrative purpose, for grounding the narrative
Speaker 1: and a kind of mundane familiarity and comfort, because coffee
Speaker 1: and cigarettes are symbols of order. You ever think about
Speaker 1: this like you can group food and drink and drugs
Speaker 1: into categories of order symbology and chaos symbology. Like if
Speaker 1: you had characters on a on a starship doing heroin
Speaker 1: or something like that, that would that would like throw
Speaker 1: you off even more, right, it would sort of like
Speaker 1: make the narrative feel even more untethered and chaotic. But
Speaker 1: if you give people these drugs that we typically think
Speaker 1: of as associated with regularity, stability, routine comfort, compliance, they're
Speaker 1: sort of signals of orderliness and predictability. And nicotine and
Speaker 1: caffeine are definitely both drugs like that, And of course
Speaker 1: that's not an endorsement of of actually doing them now.
Speaker 1: But to your point, like, the order comes from far
Speaker 1: more than just the substance itself. It's the I've talked
Speaker 1: to people who who have been smokers and former smokers,
Speaker 1: and I think in most cases and they talk about
Speaker 1: how just having the cigarette like gives them a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose in a particular environment. So like you're standing around, um,
Speaker 1: you know, outside at a show or something and the like,
Speaker 1: having the cigarette it like kind of gives you license
Speaker 1: to be there doing something and then potentially engaging socially
Speaker 1: with other people. Yeah, well, it's also a meditative ritual,
Speaker 1: and you perform the same familiar actions in the same
Speaker 1: order over and over again, when you brew a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, or when you have a cigarette. Again not
Speaker 1: endorsing tobacco, but when you do these things, you light
Speaker 1: up again that familiar pathway in your brain. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: been at like, you know, social situations where I don't
Speaker 1: know anyone, uh, and if there's coffee, or sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just some other beverage. But as long as I have
Speaker 1: the beverage, it gives me an added sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: I have this thing that I'm doing, and then when
Speaker 1: the cup is empty, I still feel compelled to carry
Speaker 1: the cup around because if I put the cup down,
Speaker 1: then I'm just standing here with nothing in my hands.
Speaker 1: What am I doing here? What kind of a freak show?
Speaker 1: Am I? You need a cup in each hand, and
Speaker 1: then you feel even more secure duct taped into place,
Speaker 1: right Edward, coffee hands. Yeah. So it's clear coffee plays
Speaker 1: a role in in establishing these meditative rituals that make
Speaker 1: us feel comfortable, in putting us in a calm mindset,
Speaker 1: getting us ready to do things, making us productive. It
Speaker 1: has all these benefits. I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of other benefits. I just found poking around, uh
Speaker 1: in in studies on the effects of coffee that seemed
Speaker 1: like they would be useful in space. One of them,
Speaker 1: Robert I. Bett, you may have encountered, this is the
Speaker 1: principle we've discovered in re cent years that warm drinks
Speaker 1: make us feel social warmth. Oh yeah, we have touched
Speaker 1: on that before. Yeah, so the standard study, I think
Speaker 1: the original one of these was published in Science UM
Speaker 1: years ago by Williams and Bargain. It's called Experiencing physical
Speaker 1: warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth, and the basic setup is you've
Speaker 1: got people who hold a cup of hot coffee as
Speaker 1: opposed to a cup of iced coffee. And apparently what
Speaker 1: the study found is that subjects who were holding the
Speaker 1: hot coffee quote judged a target person as having a
Speaker 1: warmer personality in terms of being more generous or caring.
Speaker 1: And also people holding the hot coffee were more likely
Speaker 1: to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves.
Speaker 1: And I've read there are subsequent studies on this that
Speaker 1: look into things like oral temperature and all that. It
Speaker 1: seems generally that hot beverages encourage positive social connections. And
Speaker 1: we can certainly see the value of that just on
Speaker 1: an office environment or out on the street, but certainly
Speaker 1: in space you have a team that's having to work
Speaker 1: together to give everything running, to keep everybody alive, sometimes
Speaker 1: an international team. Uh. This the coffee and or tea
Speaker 1: can be a unifying force exactly. And so this effect
Speaker 1: maybe there with other hot beverages. I mean, sure you
Speaker 1: could also have people hold and drink hot water or
Speaker 1: scalding hot orange juice. But people already like hot coffee.
Speaker 1: They already have hot coffee rituals, So why not try
Speaker 1: to give them that. I got another one. Have you
Speaker 1: read about how coffee apparently seems to give you some
Speaker 1: kind of advantage in causing the brain to recognize emotionally
Speaker 1: positive stimuli. Huh yeah. So there was a study in
Speaker 1: PLS one by Lars co Chink and Vanessa Lucks called
Speaker 1: caffeine improves left hemisphere processing of positive words. So basically
Speaker 1: what they found is that caffeine consumption boosts the speed
Speaker 1: at which the left hemisphere of the brain recognizes and
Speaker 1: process us as positive words, but doesn't have any effect
Speaker 1: on the processing speed of neutral or negative words. And
Speaker 1: they think this is probably because caffeine seems to boost
Speaker 1: dopamine transmission in the brain. The Ohio State professor of psychology,
Speaker 1: Gary Wink, who has written a lot about the connection
Speaker 1: between foods and neurochemistry, rights that basically, the dopamine activity
Speaker 1: caused by caffeine is probably one of the main reasons
Speaker 1: that caffeine is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive
Speaker 1: substances across the entire world. And so, to go back
Speaker 1: to the plos one study, the authors think that the
Speaker 1: dopaminergenic qualities of caffeine are what's leading to this increased
Speaker 1: positivity boost in in the processing powers of the you know,
Speaker 1: the the verbal processing centers of the left hemisphere. So
Speaker 1: at a time when you need people to work together
Speaker 1: as a team, get along, well, have everybody happy with
Speaker 1: each other seems to me like boosting the recognition of
Speaker 1: words and other types of cues that signal positive emotions
Speaker 1: sound is like a good deal, right, yeah, yeah, Anything
Speaker 1: you can do to boost the positive communication, right, anything
Speaker 1: that would help assist the processing of at least some
Speaker 1: cues of positivity in our environment seems worthwhile. In space,
Speaker 1: and of course again you could just have people take
Speaker 1: a caffeine pill probably right. Yeah, but people already like coffee,
Speaker 1: they already have coffee rituals. It seems like you can
Speaker 1: you can get all of these different effects concentrated into
Speaker 1: one thing if you just get coffee in space. So
Speaker 1: is there a problem with coffee in space? Why can't
Speaker 1: we just take mr Coffee up there? Well, it's only
Speaker 1: occurring to me now that there's the whole diuretic coffee.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's that's a that's a whole another
Speaker 1: episode right there. Um, well, you're thinking about that while
Speaker 1: I'm going on about positivity, you're like pooping. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it till till till now, to
Speaker 1: be honest. But but I mean, that's a whole side
Speaker 1: of the human condition that is also problematic in um microgravity,
Speaker 1: and a lot of engineering problems has been directed at
Speaker 1: the problems related to just going to the bathroom in space.
Speaker 1: Less effort has been put into the coffee problem. Coffee
Speaker 1: problem is is not as as high level, but the
Speaker 1: problem of making coffee in space is that pretty much
Speaker 1: all of our methods of of brewing coffee are highly
Speaker 1: dependent upon gas on gravity. Oh yeah, and so you
Speaker 1: don't even think about how important it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even like just roughly speaking, there there two methods of
Speaker 1: making coffee, Like one that's using that's straight up using
Speaker 1: gravity like water flowing down through grounds and then brewing
Speaker 1: the coffee. And then you have methods that involve pressure,
Speaker 1: like an espresso machine or or or an aero press,
Speaker 1: which is a device I really love for my coffee. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never used that. How does that work? Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's essentially like a cylinder has a filter on one end.
Speaker 1: You put the grounds in, you pour hot water in,
Speaker 1: and then use the plunger. You can let it steep
Speaker 1: a little bit too, so you know, it's so it's
Speaker 1: similar to something Frenche press in that respect, but then
Speaker 1: you can press you you press it and the pressure
Speaker 1: pushes the coffee out into your cup. But even that,
Speaker 1: even though pressure is involved, like that would be a
Speaker 1: disaster if I tried to use that in microgravity. And likewise,
Speaker 1: even a very nice espresso machine which looks very compact
Speaker 1: and uh and self contained, you would not be able
Speaker 1: to run that in orbit because yes, it depends on pressure,
Speaker 1: but it still depends on gravity. Maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: poorous if if you don't actually have such a thing
Speaker 1: as a down, right, and then if you have no
Speaker 1: such thing as a as a proper kitchen sink to
Speaker 1: clean any of these implements. Uh. I think most of
Speaker 1: us can can can think two very recent examples of
Speaker 1: huge messes they've made with coffee, you know, but that
Speaker 1: by accident, maybe in the clean up foot phase. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's all with a down that's that Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: with gravity in place and a proper sink to clean
Speaker 1: it up. But in uh, in board the I S
Speaker 1: S certainly aboard any other kind of uh you know,
Speaker 1: conceivable um uh capsule rules or or shuttles that we've
Speaker 1: used in in recent decades, you're just not gonna have
Speaker 1: that kind of cleanup capability. Uh. The machine itself is
Speaker 1: going to just become grotesque. And you can't just send
Speaker 1: it back down necessarily either. I mean, if once you
Speaker 1: get something up on I S S, it's uh, it
Speaker 1: needs to stay up there for a while without having
Speaker 1: to be You can't send it down every weekend to
Speaker 1: get it cleaned. Now, what about the method where you
Speaker 1: just put the grounds in your mouth and then squirt
Speaker 1: the hot water in and kind of switch it around. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that would work, is that what is is
Speaker 1: that cowboy coffee? No way, I'm I'm gonna rebrand it.
Speaker 1: That's executive coffee. Executive coffee, So now it's a luxury. Well,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of room for human error in
Speaker 1: that method. Um, I mean, basically, one of the big
Speaker 1: things to keep in mind is that even if you
Speaker 1: take the technology out of out of the scenario without
Speaker 1: proper gravity in place, liquids moved differently, they absorbed differently,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, even something as seemingly no nonsense as
Speaker 1: an aero press, which again just looks like a little
Speaker 1: pump device, is just going to be disastrous in microgravity. Now,
Speaker 1: the basic process that we depend on to make coffee,
Speaker 1: just to to really boil it down. Uh, you have
Speaker 1: hot water flowing through ground coffee beans picking up their
Speaker 1: oil essence on the way down into the coffee pot.
Speaker 1: This coffee oil released during the roasting process is what
Speaker 1: we call cafe all now. And like I said, an
Speaker 1: espresso machine that's going to force the water through the
Speaker 1: fine grounds via pressure. But again even that depends on
Speaker 1: gravity and would not work in space. So we're kind
Speaker 1: of left with with quite a conundrum here, how to
Speaker 1: how do you even bring coffee into space, much less
Speaker 1: brew it? Well maybe we should take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then come back and explore this further. Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So how to get coffee into space?
Speaker 1: How to brew coffee in space? Well, um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to talk about the past first. How how it
Speaker 1: was done previously as we as humanity uh clawed their
Speaker 1: way up into orbits? Does does this involved the words
Speaker 1: freeze dried? Yes, you better does? Oh boy? So first
Speaker 1: of all, let's get one thing straight. Prior to Apollo eleven,
Speaker 1: that's nine, the first Crewe jaunt to the surface of
Speaker 1: the Moon. Prior to this, there was no hot coffee
Speaker 1: in space. Bum you could have it cold, but this
Speaker 1: was the first omission to actually feature hot water. So
Speaker 1: so like the Giminy commanders were on, they were powered
Speaker 1: by cold coffee. Yeah, that was that was the only option.
Speaker 1: That's sick or at least room temperature or capsule temperature
Speaker 1: got coffee. That was the only option. Well, here's the
Speaker 1: science question. I don't know the answer to. Maybe you do.
Speaker 1: Why is mid temperature coffee so disgusting like ice coffee
Speaker 1: is Okay, I'm into that hot coffee is good, but
Speaker 1: like slightly lower than than warm coffee is just gross.
Speaker 1: Well I don't completely agree with that really, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I enjoy coffee at every level of every temperature.
Speaker 1: But I think the problem is when coffee reaches room temperature,
Speaker 1: because I I like cold coffee, but I have a
Speaker 1: similar reaction if I am outside drinking coffee and I
Speaker 1: have allowed it to become cold, as cold as the
Speaker 1: natural environment. So I think that's the thing. Like with
Speaker 1: hot coffee and cold coffee becomes clear that it's been
Speaker 1: it's it's clear that it's been prepared, uh at a
Speaker 1: different temperature. Well, I guess maybe it's the same as
Speaker 1: true for a lot of foods and drinks, right, Like
Speaker 1: hot meat and cold meat are good, but room temperature meat.
Speaker 1: Bring me a room temperature hamburger patty. Yeah, nobody really
Speaker 1: wants that. So hot coffee, cold coffee pre Apollo eleven,
Speaker 1: post Apollo eleven, uh, it was still coffee making was
Speaker 1: a very rough looking ordeal. So what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: as you referenced earlier, is is dehydrated black coffee freeze, dried,
Speaker 1: stored in a clear plastic bag which you then reconstitute
Speaker 1: through a water probe. Okay, so you stick the probe
Speaker 1: in and pump some hot water are in? Yeah? Are
Speaker 1: you are? Are you? You? You have your water reservoir
Speaker 1: and the capsule or the I S S or where
Speaker 1: wherever you have to be space shuttle. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you have the ability to have hot water, you can
Speaker 1: use hot water. Otherwise you're just getting cold water and
Speaker 1: then you're shooting it into this bag. It basically there's
Speaker 1: some pictures of this online. I'll try and link to
Speaker 1: one on the landing page for this episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. But it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a catheter with instant coffee in it. No,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to ask, but I have to wonder. Is
Speaker 1: the bag that the coffee came in the same kind
Speaker 1: of bag they would pee in? Was it the same hardware?
Speaker 1: I do not have an answer to that, but I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised if it if it was. You know,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to liquids in space, I mean
Speaker 1: that's pretty much how a lot of it works. It's
Speaker 1: just stuff in bags. City. Yeah, everything looks like a
Speaker 1: catheter in space. Um, so this was the technology, and
Speaker 1: really this technology remained the same until very recently instant
Speaker 1: coffee in a bag. And it wasn't actually until hawai
Speaker 1: In born astronaut Ellison on Azuka, the first Asian American astronaut,
Speaker 1: he actually requested ConA coffee. He said, Hey, um, let's
Speaker 1: spice it up a little bit. Let's let's you know,
Speaker 1: we have some great coffee in my home state. Let's
Speaker 1: see about getting some of that into orbit. And NASA said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can try that. And it was apparently a hot commodity.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, I guess for but also figuratively, Uh,
Speaker 1: the ConA coffee would be something that they would they
Speaker 1: would trade with with, say, you know, other astronauts, even cosmonauts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially knowing what we know about the way the micro
Speaker 1: gravity environment interacts with say, the fluids in your head.
Speaker 1: We've talked before on the show about how you know,
Speaker 1: astronauts often have this problem where they live in a
Speaker 1: taste and scent deprived world because when you are in
Speaker 1: a micro gravity environment, normally, uh, the gravity of the
Speaker 1: Earth while you're standing on the Earth would be pulling
Speaker 1: all the fluids in your body towards your feet and
Speaker 1: your heart naturally has to compensate by for that by
Speaker 1: pumping really hard to get stuff up into your head
Speaker 1: and your upper shoulders and everything. But when that gravity
Speaker 1: is not there and you're just floating around, the hearts
Speaker 1: still overcompensating, and so it's just filling your head up
Speaker 1: with fluids and you've got all this congestion and you
Speaker 1: can't you can't smell or taste things very well. And
Speaker 1: this is why so many astronauts, like when we talked
Speaker 1: to Jeff Hoffman on the show, report really enjoying, especially
Speaker 1: the shrimp cocktail, which sounds disgusting. Yeah, you know that
Speaker 1: that shrimp. The shrimp itself is just awful. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's not the shrimp. He's excited. It's got horse radish
Speaker 1: in and that intense aroma sort of clears out the nose,
Speaker 1: wakes you up and allows you to taste other things.
Speaker 1: So they would sort of have a shrimp cocktail full
Speaker 1: of horse radish as an order so they could taste
Speaker 1: the rest of their meal. Uh yeah, in anyway, a spicier,
Speaker 1: more fragrant kind of coffee. I can see that maybe
Speaker 1: doing a similar sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: Um and I've also seen it pointed out that the
Speaker 1: astronauts tend to they'll crave spicier and more flavorful with
Speaker 1: things in orbit then they would normally crave on Earth. Right,
Speaker 1: it's an extra special reason why you don't want to
Speaker 1: just be stuck with freeze dride folders or whatever they've
Speaker 1: got right now, We've we've touched on a number of
Speaker 1: other fluid dynamics and microgravity issues on the show before.
Speaker 1: We talked about how tears pool and an astronauts I
Speaker 1: socket if they're they're crying or just generally leaking from
Speaker 1: the ice socket um the sinus has refused to drain.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite is the fact that the bladder
Speaker 1: fills up, but but not from the bottom to the top,
Speaker 1: as it doesn't a gravity bound body, but instead from
Speaker 1: all sides. So it's it's not until it's completely full
Speaker 1: that you said that you realize you need a urinate.
Speaker 1: That's a weird image. Blood flow is also an issue,
Speaker 1: and this was This was actually explored in the third
Speaker 1: season of The Expanse, the science fiction television series that
Speaker 1: I've talked about here on the show before, including earlier
Speaker 1: when I referenced their coffee maker where that. But there's
Speaker 1: a scene where you have all these individuals that have
Speaker 1: sustained internal injuries, and it's the everyone realizes that they're
Speaker 1: just doomed because they don't have a chance to heal
Speaker 1: um unless they have some sort of artificial gravity, be
Speaker 1: at propulsion based or some other form, or just return
Speaker 1: to some sort of gravitational environment. Now, why would that be,
Speaker 1: why would it affect healing? Well? I looked at a
Speaker 1: I looked this up in a paper. There's a paper
Speaker 1: from two thousand nine titled severe Traumatic Injury during long
Speaker 1: duration space flight light years beyond a t l S.
Speaker 1: So here's a quick quote from that article. After a
Speaker 1: prolonged exposure to weightlessness, the injured astronaut will be at
Speaker 1: a physiologic disadvantage compared to patients on Earth. Changes likely
Speaker 1: to impair their ability to withstand injury include reductions in
Speaker 1: circulating blood volume, reduced red cell mass, cardiac atrophy, this rhythmias,
Speaker 1: reduced cardiac output, alterations in vascular tone and nero endocrime function,
Speaker 1: loss of the projective bony mass, and possible immune suppression.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we read about that before too, Immune system
Speaker 1: and space. Yeah, so it's I mean again, you can't
Speaker 1: help but think of that espress a machine now, no
Speaker 1: matter how well it's designed, it's just useless in microgravity.
Speaker 1: It's really a testament to uh, you know, to to
Speaker 1: biological evolution, just how well uh life can do in
Speaker 1: a microgravity environment, you know. I mean that we're not, say,
Speaker 1: like the mythical Japanese kappa with a little bowl of
Speaker 1: water on its head, that would just float free and
Speaker 1: they lose their life essence in orbit. But all of
Speaker 1: our earthly coffee machines are more like the cop That's true.
Speaker 1: They have the the the engineering prowess of a yokai.
Speaker 1: It's true. But wait a minute. We were talking about
Speaker 1: drinking coffee in space. Oh yeah, yeah, and having to
Speaker 1: go urinate in space. Uh you know, going back to
Speaker 1: that urinary example about the bladder filling up from all sides.
Speaker 1: The fluid dynamics that we described there also impact such
Speaker 1: matters as fuel tanks. So again, in microgravity, without gravity
Speaker 1: to force liquids to the bottom, they clean to surfaces.
Speaker 1: So our spaceship designs depend on veins, sponges, screens, and
Speaker 1: channels to guide liquids on the in the inside of
Speaker 1: tanks all right, say, guiding them to a spigot or
Speaker 1: to an engine in the case of fuel. Uh. Now
Speaker 1: we've also experimented with the use of liquid repellent coatings
Speaker 1: inside fuel tanks as well to avoid cleaning and uh
Speaker 1: and the boil off that can occur in the tanks.
Speaker 1: And this is research is very much still ongoing. There
Speaker 1: was one study that came out just last year on
Speaker 1: the matter. Now, fortunately the astronauts do not need to
Speaker 1: drink from the fuel reserves, no, they just they drink
Speaker 1: out of a straw or just sort of squeezing out
Speaker 1: of the bag. As you might imagine, everything is essentially
Speaker 1: a capri son, I guess in orbit. As I said
Speaker 1: earlier about your green tea pills, no offense, but that
Speaker 1: is a sick perversion of nature. You can't drink coffee
Speaker 1: with a straw, not hot coffee. Indeed, drinking hot coffee
Speaker 1: with a straw, that's just asking for trouble. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's actually part of the ritual. Again, if
Speaker 1: if the importance the psychological importance of calming rituals like
Speaker 1: making and drinking a cup of coffee, it depends on
Speaker 1: minute repetitions of movements. The sipping is an important part
Speaker 1: of the ritual. Right, yeah, you've only you've essentially only
Speaker 1: met me halfway. I'm still laugh with this ridiculous consumption method.
Speaker 1: It does not resemble my rituals at home. But boy,
Speaker 1: how'd he's sipping in space? Ain't easy? Is there a way, Joe?
Speaker 1: Do we have a way? Now? There is a way.
Speaker 1: So my source on this is a two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: piece in NASA Tech Briefs which details the development of
Speaker 1: what was then known as the zero G cup. And
Speaker 1: this cup was the work of Donald ar Pettit of
Speaker 1: the Johnson Space Center, Mark Wise, a Logal of Portland
Speaker 1: State University, and independent consultants Paul Concas and Robert Finn. So,
Speaker 1: given the physics involved, if you're in, say, the International
Speaker 1: Space Station, how would you drink from a cup? The
Speaker 1: odd thing about trying to drink from a cup in
Speaker 1: space is that the main problems are not even necessarily
Speaker 1: the problems you're thinking about right now, because you would think, probably, okay,
Speaker 1: if there's no gravity holding the drink in the cup,
Speaker 1: it'll just float up out of the cup into the air. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not that this couldn't happen. Uh, it certainly could
Speaker 1: given the right kind of forces. But generally in space,
Speaker 1: fluids like to stick to surfaces. If you've never watched, say,
Speaker 1: videos of astronauts playing with water in space, this is
Speaker 1: one of the things you'll first observe is that the
Speaker 1: water tends to not go off on its own unless
Speaker 1: you kind of like force it to by like flinging it. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: say you take a wet towel and you try to
Speaker 1: wring it out in space, what you'll see is that
Speaker 1: the water gathers around the outside of the towel, like
Speaker 1: this undulating liquid worm around the towel and uh. And
Speaker 1: that's generally how things go. The liquids want to cling
Speaker 1: to surfaces. And this is because surface tension and appillary action,
Speaker 1: rather than gravity, dictate how liquid behaves in a container
Speaker 1: or on a surface. And so if you had a
Speaker 1: regular cup of coffee in space, imagine a mug it's
Speaker 1: got coffee in it, you would probably have a hard
Speaker 1: time sipping it because what do we do in order
Speaker 1: to sip coffee from a cup. We tilt the angle
Speaker 1: of the cup. We tipped the cup and lower the lip,
Speaker 1: relying on gravity to keep the liquid level the same
Speaker 1: and eventually drive the liquid over the edge of the
Speaker 1: cup as the angle of the cup's lip goes down.
Speaker 1: But the coffee won't do that in space because you
Speaker 1: could turn the cup completely upside down and the liquid
Speaker 1: would probably stay in it trying to cling to the
Speaker 1: walls of the container. So in this environment, sipping is
Speaker 1: dang near impossible. You have a few other options. If
Speaker 1: you've got coffee in a cup, you could suck it
Speaker 1: out with a straw, or I guess you could just
Speaker 1: Another suction option would be you could clamp your mouth
Speaker 1: over the top of the coffee cup and create a
Speaker 1: seal and try to suck the coffee out that way.
Speaker 1: I think that would work, but that's not really what
Speaker 1: people want to do, what they're calling that's the very
Speaker 1: inhuman scene to try and imagine. You could try to
Speaker 1: use momentum to get it out of the cup, basically
Speaker 1: throwing the coffee out of the cup at your mouth.
Speaker 1: That's not a good option either, So if you don't
Speaker 1: want to burn your face or do any kind of
Speaker 1: cone head like mouth movement. Oh my god, I just realized,
Speaker 1: like that's another huge thing. If you had a piping
Speaker 1: hot cup of coffee. It's just gonna and it gets
Speaker 1: on you. It's gonna cling to you, cling to I
Speaker 1: just wanted to fall off. Yeah, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that some of the worst things
Speaker 1: to be scalded by are are what they're they're viscous,
Speaker 1: or there's something like a noodle because it it doesn't
Speaker 1: just splash you and run, it splashes and cling exactly. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want piping hot coffee getting out of control
Speaker 1: out into the environment. So these are not great options.
Speaker 1: So the solution that these engineers came up with is
Speaker 1: to design the interior surface of the cup up to
Speaker 1: take advantage of the way fluids behave in microgravity and
Speaker 1: zero G environments. And so the zero G cup uses
Speaker 1: sloping sides that encourage the coffee in the cup to
Speaker 1: gather toward the lip of the cup through capillary action,
Speaker 1: because the shape of the cup is basically always causing
Speaker 1: any liquid in it to want to gather right near
Speaker 1: the lip of the cup. And then the astronauts can
Speaker 1: essentially put their mouth at the lip of the cup
Speaker 1: and kind of suck the liquid so that they can
Speaker 1: drink with a more or less normal sipping behavior. Nice,
Speaker 1: So they kind of designed the inside of the coffee
Speaker 1: cup like it with the inside of a fuel tank. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so it's not always possible to get every single
Speaker 1: drop of liquid out of the cup. But of course,
Speaker 1: as we know from our earthly coffee cups, once the
Speaker 1: water or the liquid level gets down to the very bottom,
Speaker 1: there's usually a few drops left in there you can't
Speaker 1: get out even with the help of gravity. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing they pointed out about it is that so if
Speaker 1: like a tiny drop of coffee gets stuck in there
Speaker 1: and it dries there, the residue can upset how the
Speaker 1: sides of the cup make the coffee behave. So essentially,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't get cleaned out right, it'll stop working right.
Speaker 1: So so that's one thing is you've got to make
Speaker 1: sure it gets cleaned. But yeah, so it's rather different
Speaker 1: than your typical office environment, where some coffee cups will
Speaker 1: be sort of a science ongoing science experiment. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been the passive aggressive person who washed somebody else's
Speaker 1: coffee mug? I don't think I've I've gotten that far.
Speaker 1: I sometimes I have been known to tidy desks a
Speaker 1: little bit if it's like obvious that they're say multiple
Speaker 1: empty diet coke can or something like that's a little much,
Speaker 1: or like an obviously right riding fruit. But but then again,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sometimes hesitant because I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: is this a neglected orange or is this really a
Speaker 1: science experiment? Because the house stuff works offices are exactly
Speaker 1: the places where something like that sort of place where
Speaker 1: that kind of thing could be happening. Well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will discuss the ultimate coffee space solution, the I S espresso.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. It is it's the twenty one century. Uh,
Speaker 1: bring bring me technology. Yeah, we we have humans in space.
Speaker 1: We don't have any we we haven't been back to
Speaker 1: the moon. We haven't sent people to Mars or Venus
Speaker 1: as far as you know. Well I know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and say I know for certain that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: But we have come up with ingenious solutions for putting
Speaker 1: hot coffee in people's faces without burning them or making
Speaker 1: them clamp their mouth over the top of the cup
Speaker 1: like a cone head. Right, and it is it, It
Speaker 1: truly is joking aside. It is a testament to human
Speaker 1: engineering that we actually have an espresso machine that functions
Speaker 1: in orbit and is functioning in orbit right now. It's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Yeah, it's called the they call it the
Speaker 1: I S S Presso, So it's the spress. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly how we should we should we should pronounce
Speaker 1: it on the show here I S S Presso I
Speaker 1: S S Presso because then it ends with the S espresso. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's overthinking it here. It definitely works better,
Speaker 1: um reading it in your head versus speaking it aloud.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, this is so, this is the device.
Speaker 1: Some of the key design challenges here, of course, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed, come down to water containment and sanitation. You
Speaker 1: want to keep the heated water contained. You can't just
Speaker 1: be leaking out all over the place. Uh and uh
Speaker 1: and it and it has to do its thing with
Speaker 1: the with the grounds the grounds as well. You wanted
Speaker 1: to absorb the exact you know, correct amount of oil
Speaker 1: as it passes through at the correct temperature. Also, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a big problem if your machine is difficult
Speaker 1: to clean. Yes, yeah, it basically has to be self
Speaker 1: cleaning or just a very clean process to begin with.
Speaker 1: You can't again, there's no kitchen sink that you can
Speaker 1: take the thing apart in at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: There has to be a better way, yes and uh
Speaker 1: and there is. So it's detailed in the in the
Speaker 1: ride up I S. S Presso Development and Operations by
Speaker 1: Valerio Datana and Joshua Hall, published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Space Safety. Engineering and Italian designers at the engineering firm
Speaker 1: Argotech worked with the Lavazza Coffee Company and the Italian
Speaker 1: Space Agency and they set out to conquer all of
Speaker 1: these challenges and bring a new kind of coffee into
Speaker 1: orbit to to create what we've come to know as
Speaker 1: the I S S Presso. Well, I hate to just
Speaker 1: openly celebrate cultural stereotypes, but I'm glad it was the
Speaker 1: Italians who made it happen. Yeah, it feels right, doesn't
Speaker 1: And I think they realized it too. They said, look,
Speaker 1: somebody's got a step up and make coffee work in microgravity,
Speaker 1: and it should be the Italians. So the finished result
Speaker 1: is in many ways a kind of super carrat cut machine. Um,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a three D printer as well. Um.
Speaker 1: Nice if you look at the images of it. So
Speaker 1: here's what the device does. Pretty straightforward, except you know,
Speaker 1: highly engineered. You add the water, it heats it up,
Speaker 1: It shoots it through a prepackaged cat stool and into
Speaker 1: a pouch which then is either consumed from a straw
Speaker 1: that was the original design or U now is actually
Speaker 1: added to our special zero G cup. Well that sounds nice,
Speaker 1: but that also makes it sound very simple. I suspect
Speaker 1: your skipping a little bit of detail. Yes, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a number of details here. It's more complicated
Speaker 1: than it sounds. For starters, you still have to hit
Speaker 1: some key temperatures to make a proper cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so it needs to hit the water needs
Speaker 1: to hit the grounds at two and eight degrees fahrenhyd
Speaker 1: or ninety degrees cytegrade, and it needs to leave the
Speaker 1: brewing unit and a hundred and sixty seven degrees fahrenheyd
Speaker 1: or seventy five degrees cyntegrade. This is a home coffee
Speaker 1: making tip. If your home coffee machine makes bad coffee,
Speaker 1: it's very likely that the reason for this is that
Speaker 1: the water that's hitting the grounds is not hot enough.
Speaker 1: One easy way to find out if this is the case,
Speaker 1: is to just see how your your coffee that you
Speaker 1: normally use tastes. If you just add your own boiling
Speaker 1: water in like a free filter and pour it over
Speaker 1: sometimes makes a huge different. Yeah, I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons, one of the many reasons I've
Speaker 1: only use AeroPress and French press these days, Like I
Speaker 1: just heat the water it myself. There's no question about
Speaker 1: how hot the water is. Now. One of the things
Speaker 1: about hot water in space though in microgravity, steam bubbles
Speaker 1: don't evenly distribute. The bubbles can form together and create
Speaker 1: pockets of hot air that can potentially damage the machine,
Speaker 1: in the machine and the users. And that's why the
Speaker 1: I S. S machine here uses steel tubes instead of
Speaker 1: rubber tubes that can resist pressures greater than four hundred bars.
Speaker 1: I'm just now thinking for the first time, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be a horrible story if there was like a fatal
Speaker 1: disaster on a spacecraft and the cause of it was
Speaker 1: the coffee machine. It would I mean, But it's it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that is possible given given the
Speaker 1: constraints of the environment. I mean, there's it's a reason
Speaker 1: that there are so many. The reason there are so
Speaker 1: many additional safety requirements for anything that goes up, any device,
Speaker 1: especially goes up on the I S S. So everything
Speaker 1: from sharp edges to the touch temperature, etcetera. Um, so
Speaker 1: they not only had to design in a sense, the
Speaker 1: perfect coffee maker here the perfect espresso machine, but also
Speaker 1: one that just managed to hit some of the pickiest
Speaker 1: safety uh uh demands humanly possible. So how big is
Speaker 1: this hog? It is a four pound machine. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't do the breakdown. I mean we've
Speaker 1: we've done the breakdown on on the on how much
Speaker 1: money it really takes to send you know, orbital payload costs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little paylo. I didn't do that breakdown on this
Speaker 1: particular machine because ultimately, who can put a price tag
Speaker 1: on a proper espresso in orbit? That is, we should
Speaker 1: say it is not cheap. Not each pound do you
Speaker 1: take into orbit, even lowerth orbit is expensive. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it was a sent up on a thanks to SpaceX,
Speaker 1: and it is as of this recording, still in operation.
Speaker 1: It produced is it has a few different options, So
Speaker 1: you can produce a short black, a long black. You
Speaker 1: can make tea with it, which is good because not
Speaker 1: everybody that goes up on the I S S especially
Speaker 1: is is going to be a coffee drinker. Tea is
Speaker 1: more popular with other cultures. Totally true. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: also you can use it to make broth, so it
Speaker 1: can be used to rehydrate food. And I think this
Speaker 1: is this is this really, you know, I think makes
Speaker 1: a light bulb come on in many people's head when
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, it's not just a coffee and teamaker.
Speaker 1: It is uh, it is a multi purpose kitchen implement
Speaker 1: as well. It's how you make your shrimp stock and
Speaker 1: court bouyond on the I S S. Yeah. So here's
Speaker 1: a quote from the paper I referenced from Daytona and
Speaker 1: Hall quote. One of the big challenges undertaken by the
Speaker 1: engineering team was to design the I S S Presso
Speaker 1: as an I S S system and not only as
Speaker 1: a payload and extending the I S S Presso functionalities
Speaker 1: and capabilities. It does make espresso, which can provide a
Speaker 1: psychological benefit to the crew that is away from home
Speaker 1: from months at a time, but it also has the
Speaker 1: ability to expand or modify the crew menu. The I
Speaker 1: S S Presso can make tease as well as consumme a.
Speaker 1: These additional options provide flexibility to the crew menu that
Speaker 1: is not currently available. Again, this was as of the writing,
Speaker 1: it had not yet gone up. For example, a dish
Speaker 1: of rice may have a variety of broth added to
Speaker 1: it for different tastes. And they also point out what
Speaker 1: we mentioned already that astronaut tastes often change uh in
Speaker 1: in in microgravity due to fluid build up in the head,
Speaker 1: so they may prefer more spice, more flavor in orbit.
Speaker 1: So the so the options with this machine give them
Speaker 1: that flexibility. Oh that is important because so let's say
Speaker 1: you have astronauts taste testing food before they go into
Speaker 1: orbit to try to say, Okay, what am I gonna
Speaker 1: like once I get up there? But you, the way
Speaker 1: food tastes to you on Earth is not the same
Speaker 1: way that it's going to taste to you once you're up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna want to have options, and this machine
Speaker 1: provides them. No, I want to be clear about something
Speaker 1: I said a minute ago. I was making jokes about
Speaker 1: the the costs of putting the coffee machine in space.
Speaker 1: But I think stuff like this matters. I am a
Speaker 1: pro space exploration person, even considering the costs, because in
Speaker 1: many ways you could argue that at least as a contingency,
Speaker 1: space exploration is the future of humankind potentially for from
Speaker 1: a colonization standpoint, but at the very least from say
Speaker 1: a an exploration research and planetary protection standpoint. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and certainly, the engineering problems involved in making espresso, as
Speaker 1: we've we've laid out, are not confined just to coffee making.
Speaker 1: Uh that they they they they impact everything from from
Speaker 1: fuel systems to human biology. So uh so it's not
Speaker 1: everything's interconnected when you're talking about the I S S
Speaker 1: or or any kind of a prolonged space mission. So
Speaker 1: speaking of the future, Robert, tell me about the future
Speaker 1: of coffee and space, Well, my read on all of
Speaker 1: this is that this is the machine or the for
Speaker 1: the conceivable future. Um. I think we're gonna you may
Speaker 1: see different versions of it, but I think this is
Speaker 1: the one that's going to stick for a while. I mean,
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's been engineered to do the thing
Speaker 1: we wanted to do. Plus it also can reconstitute food.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're gonna see the technology evolved beyond this, really,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, like this is this is kind
Speaker 1: of the perfect coffee maker. Well wait a minute, what
Speaker 1: about artificial gravity? Okay, well that that would change everything
Speaker 1: if because you're gonna have people they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been on this uh, this lengthy space mission.
Speaker 1: I love the I S S press so, but I
Speaker 1: really want to proper pour over, which is impossible. To
Speaker 1: do a pour over, you would need some sort of
Speaker 1: artificial gravity. Now, now, we've recorded an episode in the
Speaker 1: past where we talked about the two main conceivable methods
Speaker 1: outside of just magic gravity. Uh, the two main methods
Speaker 1: that could be used here, Yeah, the ones that are
Speaker 1: feasible in reality. One of those would be linear acceleration,
Speaker 1: where you've got a spacecraft whatever you're inhabiting, constantly accelerating
Speaker 1: at exactly the right rate to generate a force pulling
Speaker 1: you towards the floor at the same rate as Earth's
Speaker 1: gravity would accelerate you towards the ground on the Earth,
Speaker 1: which is I think nine point eight meters per second squared.
Speaker 1: But that method is only good on the way to
Speaker 1: wherever you're going. So you could have your poor over
Speaker 1: on board this barreling spaceship. But then when you when
Speaker 1: you were reaching your destination, if you need to decelerate
Speaker 1: or something, then it's either go back to the I
Speaker 1: S presso or go back around I guess well the Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could flip the ship around, um like halfway. You
Speaker 1: spend half your trip accelerating half the trip decelerating. But
Speaker 1: then what happens when you get to you know, the
Speaker 1: planet that you're orbiting. Oh yeah, yeah, that's tricky. Well anyway,
Speaker 1: the more stable method that people usually talk about is
Speaker 1: uh the centripetal force method, which essentially involves a rotating
Speaker 1: habitat because as you know, like if you take a
Speaker 1: bucket of paint and you spin it around really fast
Speaker 1: in the air, you can hold it sideways and the
Speaker 1: paint doesn't pour out, and that's because of forces driving
Speaker 1: the paint and the bottom of the bucket together there
Speaker 1: because of the spinning the spinning angular momentum. And of course,
Speaker 1: the same principle could be employed in a spacecraft or
Speaker 1: a space station. If you have it spinning and it's
Speaker 1: the right size and the right spinning at the right speed,
Speaker 1: it will generate a force pulling you toward the outside
Speaker 1: rim of that spinning wheel or spinning capsule or whatever.
Speaker 1: And you could feasibly stand on it, pour coffee over
Speaker 1: on it, Uh, make a court bouyon. So you could
Speaker 1: have the in theory, you could have a spaceship with
Speaker 1: a rotating taurus that does nothing but enable coffee preparation.
Speaker 1: Like it could just have a Mr. Coffee machine on
Speaker 1: it and that's it. It would be the most expensive
Speaker 1: Mr Coffee in the history of humanity. But hey, you know,
Speaker 1: it really matters to have a kitchen with a down,
Speaker 1: as we've said, not just for coffee. I mean there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that if you are dealing
Speaker 1: with a kitchen, you're going to be dealing with containers
Speaker 1: of liquids and stuff like that. If you can have
Speaker 1: a down, that would be great. Now that of course,
Speaker 1: you could also try and get one of those event
Speaker 1: horizon gravity dry lives. And if you had one of
Speaker 1: those in place, then you could probably brew one hell
Speaker 1: of a cup of coffee where we are going. You
Speaker 1: won't need a mouth to taste. That's good. That's good. Now.
Speaker 1: The one thing you want to avoid, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to get some cream in your coffee, probably because
Speaker 1: you don't want it so black, uh that light cannot
Speaker 1: escape it. It's just gonna be probably it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a problem. That's how we create a black hole exactly.
Speaker 1: Somebody bruised the dankest cup of coffee and history up
Speaker 1: in space, and that's how that's how it all ends,
Speaker 1: brewing for centuries while the crew is in hypher sleeve, Robert,
Speaker 1: this has been fun. This has uh And I think
Speaker 1: I managed to finish my oh almost finished my own
Speaker 1: cup of coffee while we were podcasting here. I've finished
Speaker 1: mine too. Accept a little tepid sip here at the bottom.
Speaker 1: Am I gonna drink it or not? My my sip
Speaker 1: was was a little chili, but it was actually the
Speaker 1: air conditioning in this room has made it cold enough
Speaker 1: that it did feel like like it was like cold
Speaker 1: brew coffee. I'm here contemplated in the riddle of existence.
Speaker 1: Will I swallow it? You should? Yeah? Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah one very good. So there you have it, Uh,
Speaker 1: coffee and space a great opportunity to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about fluid dynamics and microgravity and some wonderful human
Speaker 1: engineering uh feats of achievement. So before we close out here,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna say the usual. If you want more
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind. Head on over to stuff
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Speaker 1: all the episodes, including such episodes as our micro gravity
Speaker 1: episode which we'll get which gets very in depth on
Speaker 1: some of these topics that we h we briefly discussed
Speaker 1: here today. You'll also find links out to every social
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Speaker 1: thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other, uh,
Speaker 1: let us know your favorite kind of coffee, what what
Speaker 1: brew you would drink in space? Uh, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, let
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Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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