- Astronauts may soon be able to enjoy a beer in space, thanks to a special bottle that could allow people to drink in microgavity.
- The bottle designed by two companies in Australia, has a passive feed system, which uses surface tension, moves beer from the bottle’s bottom to its mouth.
- The work is the next step in a long-standing venture that has seen the two partners create a beer for microgravity and then test it during parabolic flights here on Earth with the aid of non-profit space research corporation Astronauts4Hire.
- Australian beer company 4 Pines Brewing and space-engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia had earlier created the Vostok Space Beer, which was named after the vehicle that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin rode to orbit in April 1961.
- However, at present there are strict limits on alcohol consumption in space.
- NASA astronauts do not consume any at all.
- This research is not just to make a beer to enjoy, but also to learn how people’s drinking limits change in microgravity.
- Knowing these limits is the only responsible way to allow explorers to drink under any condition,” according to the makers.
- Various versions of it were dropped from a height of 23 metres to evaluate how well the beer inside maintained surface tension on glass, plastic and stainless steel.
- A simulation study and fluid-flow analysis were also performed. In a parabolic flight with Zero Gravity Corp, in which the companies achieved repeated periods of microgravity conditions, the beer flow was validated using the initial bottle prototype.
