Some things, we take for granted because we live on a planet. You know, with gravity. But astronauts aboard the International Space Station have had quite a different morning ritual from many of us -- until this April! More below the microgravity coffee globule,
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In the past, space coffee had to be sucked out of a bag, because it was the simplest way to deal with the rather counter-intuitive behaviors of liquids in very low gravity. (If you can't make out the signs the astronauts are holding at right, the first one says "Today's Coffee" and the second says "Yesterday's Coffee". A little astronaut humor.)
On April 20, however, a SpaceX rocket delivered to the ISS a new espresso machine and some specially engineered cups. Italian engineers, the Italian Space Agency, and Lavazza worked together to devise the "ISSpresso" machine, so that people living in space could have a more pleasant morning. Below, you can see the NASA video about how and why it works, or read a transcript at the NASA Science News site. (But you really ought to see the video if you can -- it runs about three and a half minutes. You need to get a look at the weird little space-espresso cups in action.)
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From d3clark:
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From serendipityisabitch:
This comment by raptavio struck me as close to perfection. From Gh0stAg3ntX's diary. [Note that the comment is in a hidden thread, but testers in the thread assert that non-TUs can reach it via this direct link. Holler if you can't get to it, and I'll paste the whole thing.]
From ridemybike:
This short comment by willrob is pretty perfect. :-) From Jen Hayden's diary wherein a Missouri County Commission protests marriage equality by lowering the flag to "below half-staff".
And from me:
In Denise Oliver Velez's diary on today's voting rights march in North Carolina, high uintas makes a comment that spoke to me about life and our national priorities.
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