This is definitely a culinary switch from yesterday’s post regarding the Chinese attempts at making mealworms palatable. There’s only one nation that produces brutally beautiful machines such as the Ducati Diavel and the Ferrari Berlinetta F12. One nation with fashion from the likes of Dolce & Gabbana, and Versace. One nation that gave us delicious and wonderful sounding foods like gelato and Chianti. Yup–just leave it to the Italians to go to space in style, this time with coffee (at least according to this CollectSpace.com article). The video below explains it all:
Italian companies Lavazza and Argotec put their heads, and more importantly their passions, together to figure out how to build an espresso machine for use in space. You see, a lot of coffee brewing processes, even pressurized espresso machines, rely on gravity to get the job done. But in space there’s very little gravity, so instead of having a nice, dark stream of coffee goodness arcing into a shot glass, astronauts would be dodging pressurized coffee streams shooting at odd angles from a regular espresso machine.
And while every sane person loves coffee, no one loves +180 degree shots of coffee in the face. So the Italians have come up with the ISSpresso machine to ensure the astronauts within the International Space Station (ISS–get it?) won’t ever have to go without. Of course, those special coffee packages will likely be costly. Then there’s always the cheap shot, which is mandatory when talking about Italian technology, about taking bets as to when the ISSpresso won’t work any more. And when some astronaut might think the Italian paperweight might serve better in some sort of re-entry experiment.
In the meantime, hopefully the ISSpresso will keep producing great tasting espresso and the astronauts will marvel at the technology while being thankful there are no mealworms in their diet. I just wonder if people have thought this whole espresso in space idea through? After all, the bathrooms will probably need some beefing up, too.
Do you want to make your own “space coffee?” I posted a cold-brew recipe here, if you wish to try your hand at it.
The Mad Spaceball 