Drinking Coffee From a Cup In Space 176
muggs was one of several readers to note a fluffy piece making the rounds about an astronaut inventing a
zero-g coffee cup. Of course, since the space station inhabitants drink recycled urine, I'm still not totally convinced that I would want to try that cup.
Should be okay... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Should be okay... (Score:5, Funny)
2astronauts1cup?
In zero-G no less. Ugh.
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'This coffee tastes like piss..' (Score:5, Funny)
Re:'This coffee tastes like piss..' (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the big deal about drinking recycled urine? I guess I just don't get it; pure water is pure water, regardless of what was in it in the past (unless, I sopose, you believe in homeopathic medicine). Statistically, I bet most of the water you drink has gone through a fellow human being at some point or another, what's the big deal?
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Re:'This coffee tastes like piss..' (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read some interesting psychology research done on humans and how they value, and transfer, the concept of filth. It's not logical, and it's pervasive.
The basic experiment works like this: you offer the subject two pieces of chocolate. One looks like a bar of chocolate. The other looks like a turd. You ask the subject which one is preferable, and what value it has over the other ("Would you eat the turd over the bar for $1?") Another version, that measures how the brain transfers filth, offers two cups of tea, one stirred with a spoon, the other with a brand-new just-removed-from-package flyswatter. People place a measurable, significant value on the object that isn't associated with filth, even if there isn't actually any filth there. It's just the perception. People mentally mark things as dirty/unhealthy/nasty, and then mark anything that's been touched by those things as similarly filthy. You can measure how much people think types of contact dilute filth ("five-second rule!") and how they perceive filth degrading over time.
And the somewhat ironic thing is that fresh urine is one of the more sterile materials out there. There are orders of magnitude less nasty infectous beasts in a nice frosty cuppa pee than in someone's saliva.
But that doesn't make people like it any better.
It horrifies many people when they go on bike rides along the river and see the waste treatment plants dumping water out into the river upstream of other cities. They realize those other cities are drinking their pee, and they in turn are drinking someone else's pee. I guess that before that point, they think that waste just *vanishes* somehow. Personally, I've often looked at watershed drainage maps and calculated how many people water has been through when it gets to, eg Des Moines compared to Black Hawk, Colorado. (I estimate 4 animals, maybe 1 person, for Black Hawk, and more like 30-70 animals/people for Des Moines.)
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That water you are referring to is tap water. If I recall correctly my TDS meter showed it to be roughly 99.9996% pure but most people won't drink it anymore. On the other hand, my bottled water measures in at 99.99998% pure.
The crazy thing. I've double blind taste tested a couple people and they could consistently tell the difference. It's fascinating that humans can detect such minute variations in water. Its obvious why we developed it, but still fascinating.
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The water I am referring to is treated with reverse osmosis and carbon filtering. I have been drinking it for years.
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That is laughably false. Where do people get such ideas?
Tap water usually contains trace amounts of minerals such as calcium and magnesium, which are all necessary for the human metabolism. But those minerals are also available in food; unless you already have a deficiency (or are borderline) the distilled water won't m
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I wouldn't go out of my way to distill my rather clean tap water for drinking purposes, but if my only choices were nasty bacteria-and-toxin-ridden puddle water vs distilled water, I'd go for the distilled and not worry about OMG MAGICKAL ELECTROLYTES! DEATH!
I see this ridiculous "distilled water = deadly poison" meme propagated often enough that I'm worried people are going to prefer dehydration or pollution and cause themselves serious health problems.
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It's like how my girlfriend chastises for not washing my hands after I pee, but has no problems giving me a blowjob without first dunking my schlong in bleach.
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Sterile is not the same as non-poisonous. Urine contains things your body didn't want in the first place (i.e. urea); putting them back in is counter-productive.
I'm not against the urine purification idea at all, just the idea of people preaching that it's okay to drink their own urine.
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'poison' is overstating it a bit. We urinate to get rid of ammonia produced from the metabolism of excess proteins. We turn it into urea. Birds turn it into uric acid, fish just dump it overboard. Since it's a waste product, it's obviously not *good* for us, but I've met people, mostly crabby weird old men, who regularly drink their own urine. They claim it makes them live longer. (I think it just makes it SEEM like they're living longer. Or maybe it's the eat-live-goldfish-first-thing-in-morning so
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Re:'This coffee tastes like piss..' (Score:4, Funny)
I expect it to be cleaner and safer to drink than water piped from an open reservoir through pipes buried in the ground that may or may not be leaking.
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And, after it cools down, the taste isn't bad either, I can tell you.
Re:'This coffee tastes like piss..' (Score:5, Interesting)
You can drink your own pee, quite safely. It is sterile, after all.
I've seen so many people say this but most do not understand what it really means.
Urine is sterile before it leaves the bladder; and then that's only usually - not always. That's it. If you have bacterial contamination in your urethra, your urine is now contaminated too. If you have a bladder infection, your bladder is also infected - even in the bladder. Mild infections which naturally pass in a couple of days are not uncommon. This is especially true if you are sexually active. Especially so if you are a sexually active female.
Also, if you are dehydrated, urine is not safe to drink. This is because the contaminates extracted from your body are no longer dilute enough and you are now poisoning your self with a concentrated form of whatever your body previously removed from your body - which may now overload your kidneys. Given some 40%+ of the US general population is at least mildly dehydrated, consuming one's own urine is risky. Furthermore, urine which is not clear, should *never* be consumed.
One should never drink urine unless your life hangs in the balance, as otherwise compromising your health and kidneys may be the price you pay. If no water is available, drinking urine is acceptable but only so long as it remains clear.
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This is especially true if you are sexually active. Especially so if you are a sexually active female.
On Slashdot....? C'mon, choose your audiences more carefully :P
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You want to know where my city's drinking water comes from? A river. You want to know where the city's sewer system empties into? The same river. It's treated before we drink it and it's treated before it's put back. I happen to live along a very long river, and nearly all the cities and towns upstream and downstream do the exact same thing. Water is water. Either it's pure enough or it isn't.
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Similar to the comment above me.... I live in Colorado, what do all you people in Vegas think
you are drinking? Or for the other side of the continental divide, Denver's filtered wastwater
heads downstream to eventually end up in Kansas City. New Orleans appears to be the endpoint,
glancing at a map, which could explain why alcohol consumption is large there.
Normally they drink from a bag with a straw, but.. (Score:2)
He used a piece of plastic ripped from his Flight Data File mission book and folded it into a teardrop-shape that's closed at one end. Surface tension inside the cup keeps the coffee from floating out and running amuck.
"The way this works is, the cross section of this cup looks like an airplane wing," he said. "The narrow angle here will wick the coffee up."
The result: space coffee in a zero-G cup.
The theory behind the novel coffee cup is the same one used by rockets to draw fuel into their engines while flying through weightless conditions in space, Pettit said.
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I'm having a bit of trouble picturing this... is it like drinking out of an erlenmeyer flask?
Re:Normally they drink from a bag with a straw, bu (Score:5, Informative)
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No. More like drinking out of a Klein Bottle.
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The horizontal cross section of the mug is a teardrop shape, rather than a circle (like a standard mug). The coffee stays in one clump in the cup due to surface tension. However, at the pointy end of the teardrop, the coffee is drawn towards the mouth of the cup through capillary action. An astronaut may sip the coffee from the pointy end of the mug while the bulk of the coffee remains in the mug. Capillary action will continuously replace the coffee that
Re:Normally they drink from a bag with a straw, bu (Score:5, Informative)
I'm having a bit of trouble picturing this...
In case you can't view the video or the pictures:
1) Take a piece of paper.
2) Fold it in half but don't squash and crease it. The joined edges are flat together and the rest of the paper tries to form a gentle curve. The midline where the crease WOULD have been is trying to be a cylinder, but the curvature has to reduce, then reverse, to end up with the edges being flat together. The result is a pipe with a cross-section shaped like a tear drop.
3) Now take your teardrop-pipe and fold one end closed. Squeeze the rest so the remaining opening in the other end stays open and teardrop shaped. This is your cup.
4) When you fill it with liquid in zero-G the liquid attaches to the cup by surface tension. It is attracted most to the folded edge, because there's so much more surface in close proximity. Next most attractive area is the closed bottom, so the bulk of the liquid stays down there.
5) Because the join of the edges is so attractive, the blob of liquid reaches an "arm" up the inside of the join, all the way up to the cup's opening. That's where you suck on it. It's like a virtual straw, which doesn't need to completely enclose the liquid.
Make sense now?
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Thanks a lot, +1 informative
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How do you get the fuel into the pumps? Remember, the fuel is floating around in microgravity
The Russians figured it out first. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Russians figured it out first. (Score:5, Funny)
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Alright, I'll cave: Actually, in Soviet Russia, the pencils drink you.
What are the odds (Score:2)
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Apologies to muggs for inadvertantly filling his inbox
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you just guaranteed someone a ton of e-mail...
Joe job?
What do you think you drink on Earth? (Score:2, Informative)
Unless you import virgin hydrogen and oxygen from a supernova, the water you had this morning has been through several organisms...
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Ewww... drinking recycled waste from a star? None for me, thanks.
I collect particles created at Fermilab and turn them into H and O, then combine them to make water.
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Sorry man, I higged all over your boson... are you gonna drink that?
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... with a lot less filtering, too.
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So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, ummm, who doesn't? Most of us just have a bigger recycling plant than they do.
rj
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And, ummm, who doesn't? Most of us just have a bigger recycling plant than they do.
And much less efficient too.
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A really interesting engineering statistics exercise is to estimate the probability that a given glass of water does NOT contain any H2O molecules that were pissed by Julius Caesar...
rj
Desperate Measures... (Score:2)
an astronaut inventing a zero-g coffee cup.
Someone needs to switch to decaf, I'm thinking...
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Especially since the machine is busted... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/23/america/shuttle.php [iht.com]
Hope they've got a good, strong blend!
Ignorant summary writer. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only real difference on the space station is that they do a much better job of purifying and testing the water than nature does.
Re:Ignorant summary writer. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I am sure some animal has took a leak in one of those sources and there is urine floating around in the water all the time, fish... animals in the woods, humans dumping sewage, humans in the woods... aliens in the woods...... bears... damn bears
Don't forget the Pope, damn Popes always shitting in the woods.
Re:Ignorant summary writer. (Score:4, Interesting)
Given how wildly inaccurate I'm sure my assumptions are, I guess this doesn't really prove anything (other than that I'm a nerd). I was hoping there'd be like four order's of magnitude difference one way or the other.
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I started out writing this post on how this number is way too low, but it's actually more reasonable than you might think. I do think it's off by an order of magnitude (but I thought it was off by at least 5).
Assume water consumption is roughly proportional to mass. The rest is based on wiki Biomass article. From the "domestic biomass = 700 mill tonnes = 1% of earths biomass"
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And I don't think his numbers are even close, I would guess the real water consumption is much larger. Generally, the smaller the organism the faster the metabolism. An 80 kg human may use a gallon of water a day. 80 kg of plankton would use a lot more than that. An elephant weighing 20 times as much a person doesn't need to drink 20 times the water. And taken over the past 3 billion years or so, most of the biom
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Have fun drinking your meteor nectar, I'll still resort to tap water.
Way to miss the point, sheesh...
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, since the space station inhabitants drink recycled urine, I'm still not totally convinced that I would want to try that cup.
Wow, I guess Starbucks really is everywhere.
Coiled tube (Score:2)
Drinking Coffee From a Cup In Space (Score:4, Funny)
If I were to drink from a cup in space, I'd need a really long straw.
Re:Drinking Coffee From a Cup In Space (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Drinking Coffee From a Cup In Space (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true as long as the liquid is being held by gravity. In orbit that is not the case, and the only limiting criterion would be friction of the liquid agains the side of the straw (which is essentially zero).
Re:Drinking Coffee From a Cup In Space (Score:5, Funny)
As long as the straw is less than 10 meters long.
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pisswater coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still not totally convinced that I would want to try that cup.
Char it and you'd never be able to tell it from Starbucks. Chill and carbonate it and it'll pass for Budweiser.
Re:pisswater coffee (Score:5, Funny)
If Budweiser tasted like carbonated urine, it would be a step up.
Re:pisswater coffee (Score:5, Funny)
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What is the deal with Starbucks and their imitators burning their beans? Is it because it's expected people are going to be adding milk and sugar, etc to it? I like a nice black cup of coffee and as such, I find Starbucks pretty undrinkable.
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I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one here that finds Charbux coffee to be over-roasted, burnt and bitter. However, all is not lost if that's the only "coffee" you can find. Add just a pinch of salt and the bitterness goes away. Still, if they made it properly you wouldn't have to do that, would you? It's just another example of how good advertising can sell crap.
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What is the deal with Starbucks and their imitators burning their beans?
It's also important what type of drink you're making from it. You need a different type of roast to make a good filter coffee from a good espresso (e.g. Italian roasts tend to be great for espresso, but don't drink filter coffee in Rome as they really don't understand it; the Nordic countries do far better at filter coffee). You may need a different roast if you're adulterating the coffee with milk or sugar or even just hot water.
The other thing is whether the coffee is burnt during or after final making. I
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There's not nearly enough hops in Budweiser to be as bitter as Starbucks coffee. Not by a long-shot.
Cheers
Recycled water? (Score:5, Insightful)
ALL water is recycled. Thirty thousand years ago a mammoth was pissing out the water that's sitting in your coffee urn this morning. People need to get over this, just like they need to get over irradiated food. It's at least as safe to drink as bottled water; And likely moreso since some bottled water undergoes no processing prior to being packaged. Did you know that the LA municipal water supply recycles its sewage into tap water? It's the nation's largest sewage processing station, and as a byproduct it produces several million tonnes of valuable fertilizer that's highly valued for use on the wineries in California. This isn't unique to California -- many coastal cities use similar measures because the rivers are too polluted and they're too close to sea level to find water reserves underground.
Re:Recycled water? (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemy! God constantly provides us with new water through his tears, AKA the rain, which adds mass to the planet daily. I suppose next you're going to try to tell us that clouds form through evaporation of the seas, or some such nonsense, despite the fact that clouds are EVERYWHERE, and the oceans would be dry by now if they were constantly evaporating.
Re:Recycled water? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if he's crying it's probably because of something you did.
Re:Recycled water? (Score:5, Funny)
If so, they're tears of JOY!!!11
Recycled BS (Score:2)
People need to get over this, just like they need to get over irradiated food.
What a stupid comparison. Purifying water is just a matter of removing the stuff that you don't want in it. Irradiating food means bombarding it with radiation that undoubtedly causes physical changes. Whether these changes are dangerous is a matter of controversy, and I won't pretend to know enough to have an opinion.
What I do know is that I'm tired of people dismissing whole ranges of opinions because they're too lazy to distinguish serious arguments form the half-baked notions of a few idiots. By that l
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It was said to account for the good flavor and "softness" of London tap water, which does well in taste tests, and, in a separate article, for the sexual mutation of the fish in the river (from birth control pills apparently).
You're already drinking urine every day anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
Rob, dude, you really should think about some of these stories a little more before posting them. We're all drinking urine (and other much more horrible things) each and every day. It's what those costly water treatment plants on Earth are responsible for filtering, and it's what those expensive systems for the ISS are designed for. What's the difference? Either way the if the coffee tastes good, and it's clean water that's used, I'm happy drinking it :)
Young Doctors In Space (Score:2)
But it doesn't taste like urine. (Score:2)
But I wonder who did the A/B comparison.
Maybe they just taste-tested the coffee against a cup from Starbucks.
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No, they don't filter it. They just swish the charcoal around in the bottom of the pot for a while and BAM: "coffee".
The best part of walking up... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or Sgt. Folgers' crystals?
The Trek nerd in me wants to make jokes about Captain Kirk's Dilithium Crystals, but I'm exercising extreme restraint in this case. You're welcome.
A real mug design (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure I've seen this... (Score:2)
... in some SF novel or another. The design wasn't exactly the same, but the drinking vessel described used the same basic idea of surface tension wicking water out of the container. As the article noted, this is based on a common fuel-tank design. The story had an enclosed container because, well, even in free fall you've got to deal with the occasion fumble-fingered astronaut imparting acceleration to the container along an inappropriate vector. :)
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maybe you read something from this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Keys_Moran [wikipedia.org]
in there they drink coffee and other liquids from bulbs, kinda like a cross between a bottle and a pipette (thats the impression the books left me with at least).
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I'm pretty sure I haven't read "First Contract" though the precis reminds me of a couple of other stories I ought to go back and re-read. SO that makes at least *two* novels or short stories this idea's shown up in. ^^
I love the tags (Score:2)
Idle pepitotest coffee is science space story.
kopi space luwak (Score:2)
Broken page (Score:2)
What the hell ?
Summary writer = idiot (Score:2)
Of course, since the space station inhabitants drink recycled urine, I'm still not totally convinced that I would want to try that cup.
What the hell do you think they do with the urine you shoot into your toilet, you bloody cod?
On Soviet Soyuz missions... (Score:2)
Recycled Urine? (Score:2)
It's called the Water Cycle (Score:2)
Don't look now, but you already drink recycled urine. Stuff goes down the drain, to water treatment, to lake or ocean or golf course. At this point, it evaporates. The water vapor aggregates as clouds, the clouds produce rain. The rain ends up in reservoirs or aquifers, whence comes drinking water.
The cycle is just a little smaller in the space station.
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U. T. I. (Score:2)
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Most dump it underground, where it is eventually filtered right back into the wells and rivers you drink from. Many still dump the treated sewage into rivers or other large bodies of water, where it eventually evaporates and falls as rain, or enters an underground aquifer.
Besides, just think of all the water content you get from your food. That lettuce was surrounded by animal poop and/or nasty chemicals for fertilizer, and then irrigated with water, soaking right through the poop into the lettuce.
Re:rocket turbopump to administer astronaut caffie (Score:3, Interesting)
I am pretty sure what they are referring to are satellites already at their desired orbit.
Once satellites reach their orbit, they don't just sit there. After some time the orbit can start to shift around, so satellites use very small station keeping thrusters.
Most of the time these thrusters are bi-props (MMH and NTO) that use the same tanks that were employed to feed the much larger main engine used to circularize the orbit.
But once the satellite is at orbit, you have a relatively small amount of f