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."
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: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.