According to our meticulous research, 536 people have gone into space in the history of humankind. But having such a small target market hasn’t stopped the good folks at 4 Pines and Vostok have successfully tested the next step towards being able to enjoy a beer in space – from a bottle, and not one of those squeezy plastic bags that astronauts have to contend with in zero gravity.
On 17 November last year, the Vostok Space Beer project took to the skies once again, to test out ‘The Device from Down Under’ – a gizmo designed to ensure that beers can be drunk straight from the bottle in micro- and zero-gravity.
Obviously, we’re not scientists – so the low-tech explanation of the Device is this: it’s an insert that pops into a bottle, which “takes advantage of surface tension to wick the liquid from the bottom of the bottle to the top”. Like all good science-type stuff, it sounds deceptively simple…
The end result, creators Jaron Mitchell (4 Pines) and Jason Held (Saber Astronautics) hope, will be a commercially viable thingamajig that will allow future space tourists and astronauts to enjoy a refreshing beverage while hurtling through space at roughly 28,000 km/h.