Coffee in space
For some reason a minute ago I started daydreaming about coffee in space. Sadly, we donβt seem to be near the time when it will be possible for middle-class wannabe explorers/adventure seekers like myself to buy a ticket to visit the Moon or even do a few orbits of Earth without raising the kind of cash it takes to get a U.S. president elected. But in several countries right now with space programs a chosen few can call themselves astronauts and look forward to achieving weightlessness if theyβre lucky.
Hereβs what Iβm wondering: where are all the coffee-loving astronauts? And if theyβre out there, what do they drink while in space? Judging by this video, which focuses on *how* to drink coffee in space, it seems that only pre-brewed coffee is available. Just squeeze from the bag and serve! I understand that these people have more important things to do than geek out over freshness, etc., but they can undoubtedly do better.
Some are even trying to. A little googling yields the following link to a story describing a zero-G coffee percolator invented by two Costa Rican engineering students and commissioned byβ¦drum roll, pleaseβ¦a retired astronaut who spent serious time on the International Space Station back in the day! Ding ding ding! Franklin Chang-Diaz, youβre boldly going where no one has gone before. Although I doubt the challenge is distracting you from running your Ad Astra Rocket Company or teaching physics and astronomy at Rice University.
If brewing coffee in space is cutting-edge at the moment, what would we call *grinding* coffee in space? Science fiction? That sort of grinding would present real challenges, I think. For example, thereβs no shortage of espresso enthusiasts who insist that the downward bean-on-bean pressure exerted within a grinder hopper gives them more consistency. Imagine what would happen in a gravity-free environment. Would you need suction?
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