Zero-gravity cup for urine drink
2008-11-28 10:47
Cape Canaveral - Future space
travellers may be drinking their own urine, thanks to the
International Space Station's new water recycler, but they can
now do so with a touch of class.
Endeavour astronaut Don Pettit, a self-described tinkerer
who served as the space station's flight engineer in 2003,
invented a zero-gravity cup that wicks liquids along the sides
of a piece of folded plastic, eliminating the need for a
straw.
Because liquids typically form spherical blobs in
weightlessness, astronauts drink from sealed pouches using
straws.
Pettit, a huge coffee fan, didn't like sipping his
java, and created the cup from a sheet of transparent plastic
used in overhead projectors by folding it into the shape of an
airplane wing and taping it in place.
"The way this works is the cross-section of this cup looks
like an airplane wing. The narrow angle here will wick the
coffee up," Pettit explained in a video radioed to Nasa's
Mission Control Centre in Houston and broadcast on Nasa TV.
'Because we can'
"We can sip most of the fluid out of these cups and we no
longer have to drink our beverages sucking through a straw in a
pouch," Pettit said.
On Thursday, Pettit made another cup for crewmate Stephen
Bowen and proposed a toast to the Thanksgiving holiday, space
exploration and "just because we're in space and we can".
One of the Shuttle's main mission was to install a $250m water recycling system enables the Space Station crew
to recycle urine and other wastewater into drinking water.
The astronauts were scheduled to share a Thanksgiving meal
of dehydrated turkey with their space station hosts before
closing the hatches between the two ships in preparation for
Endeavour's departure on Friday.
The shuttle, which delivered a water-purification system to
the station among other gear, is due back at the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida on Sunday after a 16-day mission.