07:10 AEDT Thursday 21 December 2000

Beer in space is the final frontier

AAP --

Dutch technologists are on their way to cracking one of the most urgent problems of the space era: how an astronaut can get a decent beer in conditions of zero gravity.

Challenge No. 1: how to get the ale out of the barrel.

On Earth, an inert gas such as carbon dioxide is used to force the brew out of the bottom of the container and up the spout.

But in space, the liquid would float around idly inside the barrel, which means that as much gas as beer is likely to come out of the tap.

Delft University of Technology researchers, working hand-in-mug with Dutch company ENL, have spent three and a half years on this dilemma and appear to have the ideal barrel, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue.

"It has a flexible membrane, which contains the beer, inside the barrel," the project supervisor, Kajsa van Overbeek, told the magazine.

"Normal air is pumped between the barrel wall and the membrane to force the beer out."

All an astronaut would have to do is pressurise the container, open the tap and pour out the amber nectar.

The team put their invention to the test on the European Space Agency's so-called "vomit comet" - a plane that flies in a series of controlled parabolas, giving 30 seconds of stomach-churning freefall each time, that are the closest conditions on Earth to zero gravity.

They were surprised to find that the beer plopped neatly out of the tap, floating in identical, pingpong ball-sized amounts.

That could be fine for an astronaut in space, who could use a straw or his lips to snare a refreshing mouthful.

Disappointingly, there was no foamy head on the beer. But this is not surprising, given that gas bubbles need gravity in order to rise, otherwise they stay inside the beer.

In turn, that poses potential problems for realising the heady vision of ale in orbit.

Gas bubbles inside the stomach can balloon uncomfortably if the external pressure outside the body changes, and it is not easy to belch in space.

However, astronauts aboard the Russian space station Mir have already drunk Coca-Cola without harm and NASA has already tested Alka-Seltzer in zero gravity, so the problem may not be insurmountable, New Scientist said.-AFP

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sci_tech/story_6065.asp

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), December 28, 2000