Space station visitors can thank Rice students for the delicious coffee
Updated 1:00 pm, Wednesday, April 24, 2013
A group of Rice University engineering students think they can make the perfect cup of coffee with a 3D printer for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
If you're looking for a cup of delicious caffeine in near-Earth orbit, you might agree with them.
The Rice students, Robert Johnson, Colin Shaw and Benjamin Young, created a simpler way for astronauts to customize coffee to their personal tastes, forgoing the instant, syrupy, pre-packaged liquid that they had been drinking in space. Sounds way worse than your standard breakroom coffee.
The new system lets astronauts distribute just the right amount of creamer and sugar. Before this project, astronauts could not decide how sweet or bitter their morning cup of joe could be. A two-element roller with a gauge that dispenses the desired ratios of sugar and cream was created with a 3D printer at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.
Johnson Space Center's Space Food Systems Laboratory gave the trio constraints on what can and cannot be used in space. The challenge for the group was in creating a way to make the coffee that the astronauts could replicate in the zero gravity of the ISS. The astronauts heat up their current mixture with 158 degree water, while on Earth the optimal temperature for a cup is at least 140 degrees.
"If they know what they like on Earth, they know what they like in orbit," said Shaw in a press release.The students are hoping their coffee soon becomes the astronauts' favorite treat aboard the ISS. Right now, the astronauts are raving about the Russian shrimp and tartar sauce from the ISS kitchen.
Now, let's just hope NASA doesn't feel the need to hire a few surly space baristas.