Space Joe

If the inability to enjoy a hot cup of coffee in space has kept you from pursuing your cosmonaut dreams, last week's invention of the zero-G coffee cup by NASA astronaut Dave Pettit is sure to make you tingle. Pettit is known for funky space inventions, but when he arrived at the International Space Station, he had one goal in mind: Find a way to enjoy his beloved joe from a cup, rather than a bag & straw. Liquids in space can be a messy proposition, and hot coffee introduces an element of risk as well, but that wasn't going to stop Pettit from devising a method of enjoying his java from a cup. Using a piece of his mission book, he formed a vessel with a tear-drop shape that is closed at one end. The surface tension within the cup keeps the coffee inside instead of floating about the station. He suggested that his invention could apply to more than just coffee -- future space colonists could utilize this kind of cup for celebratory toasts. So now that the coffee cup question has been answered and you're back on track to becoming an astronaut, you'd better hit the books -- time to learn Russian.