Zero-G Coffee Cup Design From Astronaut Don Pettit's 'Saturday Morning Science' (VIDEO)

NASA astronaut Don Pettit will do anything for his morning coffee—even physics. Using a sheet of plastic from an overhead projector and a solid understanding of fluid dynamics, Pettit created a special cup that you can sip from in zero gravity without using a straw.

Liquids can cause a lot of damage aboard the International Space Station (ISS), so most astronauts had to get used to drinking through a straw from a little pouch. Pettit wouldn't stand for it. His innovation came from the design of rocket fuel tanks—if you need to be able to reignite fuel without gravity to help it along, one particular shape can make the liquid follow a narrow edge. Apply this shape—sort of like a cross-section of an airplane wing—on a smaller scale, and you have yourself a handy coffee cup.

This video isn't new, but it's one of the highlights from Pettit's video series Saturday Morning Science, in which he used his days off to perform microgravity demos for viewers of all ages. The series has recently been reincarnated as Science off the Sphere, a partnership between NASA and the American Physical Society, and you can watch the first video here.

As the ISS's resident "fun dad," Pettit has come up with all kinds of space shenanigans, from drinking tea with chopsticks to building gyroscopes with CD players.

Pettit has also answered HuffPost readers' questions from space.

Comments

[TKI]

04:37 PM on 02/13/2012

Use a straw with that...be a lot easier

[SwiftJonathan]

06:33 PM on 02/10/2012

Very cool!

[afp in Tx]

05:15 PM on 02/10/2012

Don the Science Guy. Love it!

[cuoi]

03:47 PM on 02/10/2012

You could use it for many purposes besides drinking coffee. After drinking your coffee, and there is a line at the bathroom, no problem. Pee in the cup. Take it and dump it in the urine recycler and then use it to chase your coffee with a fresh sip of water. You scoff? Scientists here may back me up on this: that fresh cup of water you're drinking probably contains some water molecules that could be traced to a T Rex taking a massive leak a couple million years ago...

[MISTERUNCONVENTIONAL]

03:49 PM on 02/10/2012

Sheldon? Zzzat you?

[cuoi]

04:09 PM on 02/10/2012

I knew who I was this morning but now I'm not sure...

[czs5056]

03:26 PM on 02/10/2012

What we are need is to make a ship so dense and massive that we can fit a whole army of technicians on it and create enough gravity that a regular mug will work fine.

[MISTERUNCONVENTIONAL]

03:52 PM on 02/10/2012

Doh! To create gravity similar to earth's would require MASS equivalent to earths.

So my questions are:

1) Where are you going to OBTAIN the necessary mass, and
2) How are you going to launch such a mass into space, without, (every reaction has an equal and opposite..) knocking EARTH out of orbit.

Were you a classmate of Miz Palin, by any chance?

[czs5056]

07:15 PM on 02/10/2012

we several asteroids and hook them together creating a bigger asteroid. then we use the human made super asteroid and use that as the building frame for the ship and build directly on the surface. we do not need 1G of gravity (.8-.9G will due) we also bore holes into the super asteroid that we can use to store fuel for propulsion and bore other holes that can be used for other purposes (housing, radiation shield chamber, lab, etc.) we do not send the thing in one piece into space and we do not assemble it on earth. for air we could send a delivery ship with huge balloons of air that can be emptied for the people to breath.

[jasongrundy]

03:24 PM on 02/10/2012

Science is so cool

[BlackJAC]

02:57 PM on 02/10/2012

Now if they can figure out how to get beer and soda to work in zero-G without the carbonation creating unwanted thrust...

[Spiggy]

02:35 PM on 02/10/2012

Must be boring up there if you have the time to reinvent the sippy cup.

[dnno1]

02:25 PM on 02/10/2012

I's still a bag.

[dutchgirl55]

02:08 PM on 02/10/2012

Fun, but I don't see the difference between sipping coffee from a straw the old way, or sipping it from a narrow, straw-like bend of material. That's an adult sippy cup.

[MISTERUNCONVENTIONAL]

03:54 PM on 02/10/2012

SHHHH!!!

[freddsky]

01:54 PM on 02/10/2012

If you drink ten or more of these bevvies on your shift, you might just need some Zero-G jockey shorts. If so, you're in luck--he also designs kacks! Just don't nag if your wing turns out to be a rudder.

[american-dolt]

01:29 PM on 02/10/2012

Another World, looks like Maple Syrup.

[BlackJAC]

03:00 PM on 02/10/2012

You should see what a candle flame looks like in zero-G: it burns spherical.

[JoeOhlandt]

01:11 PM on 02/10/2012

Hey, this guy is smart. He should be a rocket scientist or something.

[monall]

01:11 PM on 02/10/2012

Ugh! That looks like really weak coffee.

[iskra]

01:08 PM on 02/10/2012

I love how sometimes solutions are so simple and elegant yet nobody figured it out for years and then bam, the idea shines through and seems obvious in hindsight.