Microgravity Coffee Cup 88
BuzzSkyline writes "Despite the fact that astronauts have been eating and drinking out of tubes for decades, it's actually possible to drink from an open-top cup in space. Astronaut Don Pettit recently downlinked a video that shows him slurping coffee from a cup he kludged out of plastic sheet. It appears to work pretty much like a cup on Earth, even in freefall aboard the International Space Station, thanks to capillary action."
Don Pettit (Score:5, Interesting)
Don Pettit is both the smartest and craziest man I've ever met.
He's built all sorts of crazy gadgets in space.
Years ago he took the space station's vacuum cleaner into reverse and rode around on it, Slim Pickins style through the space station.
He also smelts his own metals in a forge in his back yard to make various things.
Re:Don Pettit (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an excellent demonstration of why we need to further our space travel. It may seem trivial, but to get real advancements in space require people there. Theory is nice and all, but there's so much to learn from practice.
A better example of what I'm saying is thrust. There are plenty of people on the ground theorizing about the bigger and better thrust systems. There are some neat ideas. People would be able to work through them faster by actually being there, and not only doing the specified projects, but their personal pet projects. For example, someone may discover that a windmill style device for turning solar winds into usable energy, and cosmic could be converted into some usable fuel.
A cup is something. It's an example of what can be done from interest or necessity. Something that we're rapidly abandoning, as we watch manned space travel dwindle down to nothing.
Re:Don Pettit (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't confuse government spending with the worth of the projects. There have been an abundance of amazing technologies that have come about due to the space programs. We'd have even more if we had many generations of spacecraft, building upon known technology. From Mercury to the Shuttle, there were tremendous advancements. What would it be like if we had multiple generations of spacecraft, and real space based societies?
Antarctica has a population in the thousands during the winter. Space? The most I could find was 13 [space.com]. That's not a huge population for a space faring population. That's a camping trip, without the woods. To put it in comparison, 0.0000002% of the world population was in space at the same time. Once.
No one does fun little experiments like "What happens if you space a water balloon?". There are important things to know, and until more people are up there doing oddball experiments, we won't discover 'em.
And, I'm all for spacing a water balloon. A thermite filled balloon launched towards the atmosphere should make a pretty light show. It might need to be a pretty big balloon. Lots of room to experiment. :)
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There's no oil in space
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There's no oil in space
How do we know that? Has there been deep drilling on some other planets that I haven't read about?
Yeah; if I had to place a bet, I'd bet against any of the other planets in our solar system having oil. But that's something different that actually knowing that there's no oil anywhere in all those large areas where we've never drilled at all.
For all we know, the data showing that Europa probably has a deep liquid layer below its surface might be because there's kilometers-deep layer of (extra-virgin ol
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yes after 40 years and billions of dollars, we now know its possible to drink from a cup in LEO, space .... the final frontier
And if you think that's the only thing which has come out of the Space Age, you're a complete idiot. Despite your current "Insightful" moderation. I'd mark you as Troll but there's too many of you to waste points on these days.
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yes after 40 years and billions of dollars, we now know its possible to drink from a cup in LEO, space .... the final frontier
It's better than giving it to banks to cover their lousy investments.
Re:Don Pettit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, let's toss families out of their houses, because hey, space cups.
What? You think that money spent on NASA is toss into a spaceship and blasted into space never to be seen again? No, that money is going right back into businesses here on earth, and back into people's pockets. And we have a cutting edge aerospace industry that makes those robotic probes possible. It's produces something useful. Banks do fine on their own. They're simply wringing money out of the American tax payer because they can simply buy the right people to make it legal. NASA puts men on the fucking moon when we give them money. When we give money to banks they create economic disasters and a handful of really rich guys.
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Because this is America, and we don't believe in personal responsibility here. It's your god given right to live in a house you can't afford.
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how about making the military buy any bombs over lets say 0.5 ton through a fundraiser, and give that money to NASA. I'll still fund the ammunition, bullets, cannon rounds, tank rounds, etc, just nothing that goes "BOOM!" Allow the military to petition for funds to buy a bomb on a case by case basis (This would really be "justify the use of the bomb they did use so as to get money to replace it", not actually have to get permission to use it, or the lead time to have one built.)
I think the military could st
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finally with the entire right wing signing Grover Norquist's "No new taxes on teh rich EVAR!" pledge good luck doing anything about the debt we are drowning in which means no more money for NASA, hell look at how many are having a shitfit at Obama calling to LOWER corporate taxes simply because he wants to close the loopholes that give companies like GE billions in return for nothing.
Your really worried about the Republicans? Really?
Take a look at the lay of the land. Texas and Northern Florida both elect Republicans. The with a Democratic Majority, anything space related starves republican communities and leads to the chance of more Democratic victories in the future.
What the United States has left of a space program is being gutted by the Democrats. I would predict that the Republicans would re-fund NASA and the space sector. Not continue to strip it down as would happen if the Democr
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So, you're saing V'ger is far superior in the advancement of human space travel, than the ISS and Space Shuttle programs? I find that, and the continued dialogue entertaining.
We waste more in endless foreign wars, than we do for so many other things.
Probes are nice and all, but t
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^
This
I might ever lead to being able to build my own Twin Ion Engine spaceship
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I couldn't agree more. The only thing I could add to this is that he who smelt it, dealt it... but I'm sure that 'experiment' has been done a lot up there already.
that's great (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't stop to think about the problem of getting the liquid to your mouth, I figured the hard part was getting it to go into and stay into the cup.
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Especially without a Klein bottle [kleinbottle.com] coffee cup.
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A lot of ~really~ smart guys know that life is what you make of it. There are plenty of ~really~ smart guys who would gladly take a 5% chance of dying to experience something they've dreamed of since childhood, and that only a ridiculously small number of humans ever get to do.
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Clearly you've never interacted with astronauts and potential astronauts.
The ones who go up there are absolutely not the "best & brightest". In the beginning, they were good test pilots. Now, they are politically connected. In either case, peak intelligence is not a factor.
Think about it. Why would risk their life riding a rocket to orbit?
If you want to see earth from space, there are plenty of orbital cameras with better resolution than your eyes.
If you want to experience free-fall, you can go skydivin
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But the big problem is that we send humans at all. It's a terrible waste of resources.
I couldn't disagree more. Some day humans will have to and will want to leave earth and live on space stations and/or other planets, and the knowledge we collect now about how the human body can survive in such environments will be vital. This might happen soon or in many hundred years from now, but it will happen. Perhaps we will also have artificial gravity, better medical support, and all kinds of other things that make life in space easier until then but in the end all of these gimmicks will build upon
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I doubt there are too many test pilots who are stupid. The politically connected may be another story.
I don't think intelligence and risk-aversion are necessarily correlated, nor are intelligence and thrill-seeking necesarily negatively co
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I like the corkscrew cup better, personally. It looks 'cooler,' especially when it's full. The obvious issues are likely to be the weight-to-volume ratio difference between the cups, and the fact that the flexible cup shown in the current article collapses to a smaller volume for st
Dance of the Knits (Score:2)
How about some knitting to go with your tea?
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/sots/episode1.cfm [physicscentral.com]
Pretty cool!
Coincidentally (Score:4, Informative)
Challenge Question? (Score:1)
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As you saw in the video capillary forces hold the liquid in the "cup" and if there was a straw in it, the capillary forces would pull the liquid all the way up to the tip.
Oh and since both you and the surface of the fluid is in the same pressure environment you don't have to fight the vacuum of space either.
I want a spacestation, too (Score:1)
6 astronauts, 1 cup. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:6 astronauts, 1 cup. (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't worry. This is the exception.
Number one you can't film things like that in space.... well not right now due to policy... so it could change...
Well don't forget about the fact that gravity does not exist on the space station too. Can you imagine what that would be like in a confined space? People curled up into tight little balls propelling themselves around. The horror...
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"0 g" is a specifier of acceleration magnitude (gravitational acceleration included).
Except tidal forces[1] an object in an orbiting spacecraft experiences an external acceleration (relative to the craft) of exactly zero magnitude. When not ignoring them we get really small accelerations on the order of .000001g or 1 ug [2], hence microgravity.
Furthermore for the purposes of local experiments, it is correct to treat the craft as a proper inertial reference frame, despite appearing substantially non-internal
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Actually you jest, but there is a video of two astro-naughties testing out which physical positions and acts would work in space... and NASA refuses to release the video(good thing IMHO) but basically doggy style was the only position that worked, since the guy could hold the girl's hips and thrust her that way. All other positions would require some special sleeping bag type solution where they would have handles on the inside.
Of course this was done for scientific purposes... to see about future human rep
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Of course this was done for scientific purposes... to see about future human reproduction...
I would think that it would be a far better idea to build space stations with artificial gravity[1] and radiation shielding before trying human reproduction.
These two items should be NASAs main priorities[2] if they really want humans in space. Otherwise they should pack-up and stop wasting time and resources.
[1] Can be done by spinning stuff. The station does not have to be huge if tethers are used.
[2] Figuring out a really cheap way to get into orbit would be nice too, but as long as we do not have the fi
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Not just capillary action. (Score:1)
It's also dependent on surface tension. Surface tension is what makes liquids form balls of fluid in zero gee. The gap is too great in the cup for mere capillary action to contain it I'd even say it's more dependent on surface tension than capillary action.
Re:Not just capillary action. (Score:4, Informative)
capillary action is a manifestation of surface tension
Re:Not just capillary action. (Score:5, Informative)
I said it was a manifestation of it, not that the two were equivalent terms.
I highly recommend the MIT video series by Asher Shapiro on the subject:
http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html [mit.edu]
"Surface Tension in Fluid Mechanics"
the videos are excellent (and that's a big understatement), but if you are in a hurry just have a look at the section talking about contact angles in the film notes: http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf/04STFM.pdf [mit.edu]
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ps- bazinga
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capillary action is a manifestation of surface tension
Where are the capillaries? Better to say it's just surface tension at work here, and the summary is wrong.
Well! (Score:1)
Well! This is a refreshing story!
Revisiting an old topic (Score:1)
This is the second time Don Pettit has made a video about these cups. The first time was in 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7LcugO3zg
A Matter of Timing (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had a cup of coffee every morning on the Space Station, your heart would probably explode.
(the sun 'rises' every ~90 minutes for the ISS)
Similar to my work pattern... (Score:3)
I usually get a cup of coffee every 60-90 minutes. Do I get to be an astronaut?
Capillary Action (Score:1)
Ah, Capillary Action.
The source of all of my science fair projects.
Aww, man (Score:2)
Watching that video made me want to be an astronaut again. Haven't felt that way in a long time. We need cheap, publicly available space flight in the next 50 years or I'm gonna be very disappointed.
illogical (Score:1)
Food in space... (Score:1)
Astronaut Don Knotts has proved that it is also possible to eat peanut butter and crackers while in a microgravity environment.
Terrible waste (Score:1)
This just reinforces what a waste of time and money the current space program is. Yeah, it is somewhat inspirational to have humans up there at all. But terribly impractical.
In the 20th century, humans were the most compact computers & manipulators for these missions. But that is no longer the case.
It's ironic that we send people up for near-earth-orbit missions (which could be controlled from the ground with sub-second latency), while we send robots on the long missions (which would benefit most from a
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That's a waste of money too!
We should just live in caves and bang rocks together!
The ISS fuels creativity and imagination (Score:2)
They must really bo bored up there: his collegue created a lego replica of the ISS... within the ISS [dailymail.co.uk].
Pretty cool, I think.
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He better be careful... (Score:2)
Mom! (Score:2)
Howard Wolowitz is very jealous.
Laplace Young (Score:2)
If you're interested in modeling this phenomenon you can do so using the Laplace-Young equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%E2%80%93Laplace_equation [wikipedia.org]
I did part of my Master's thesis using it... for some examples see here: http://www.cfdlab.ae.utexas.edu/labstaff/carey/GFC_Papers/Carey216.pdf [utexas.edu]