How to be civilized on the space frontier

August 9, 2019 7:10 AM

Don Pettit's guide to fine dining etiquette in space:

When you live in an isothermal environment, it can be a real treat to serve your guests a bag of cold water

For special occasions -- perhaps after a space walk -- you can serve drinks in a "Zero-G cup" made from scrap material

Now is the time to break out the best thermal-stabilized meal pouches you've been hoarding

Clean the food scissors and always have a loaner spoon available

Displaying dirty duct tape is exceedingly rude to your guests; always put out new, clean tape.

Pettit also points out that while catching food in your mouth is considered impolite in most cultures, on the space station "opening wide and making a clean catch like a sea creature inhaling another will most always bring cheers from your guests". Which, much like his self-invented names for space yo-yo tricks, reminds gentle readers that "on the space frontier, the etiquette book is still being written. I encourage you to invent new ways of conducting everyday life, including entertaining. It is one of the reasons we find ourselves here in the first place".

posted by autopilot (8 comments total)

I encourage you to invent new ways of conducting everyday life, including entertaining. It is one of the reasons we find ourselves here in the first place.

I'd love to see that in NASA's official literature and budget pitches:

Reasons to fund NASA human space exploration

• Better understand the universe with zero-g research
• Develop new technologies for human habitation of space
• Create 21st century Miss Manners materials for space explorers

;)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:54 AM on August 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

This is one of the best things I've read on the Internet in a while. Thank you for sharing!
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:58 AM on August 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Okay, I could spend hours on that NASA sight and this post is awesome. I'm still trying to locate the instructions for the Zero G cup so I can see what it looks like....please feel free to include the direct link below if anyone can find Appendix C with the instructions. Also, I feel a bit dim for asking this, but why is all the food served either hot or room temp? It seems like with chilly, chilly outerspace right there that it would be easy to serve things cold.
posted by victoriab at 8:43 AM on August 9, 2019

The Zero-G cup demo video shows how surface tension pulls the liquid to the sharp crease, allowing the astronaut to drink of the liquid without the ever-present straws that makes them look like "insects sucking the juices from some lower insect".

Cooling things in space is really, really, really hard since there is no convection. You need massive radiators (1680m^2!) to deal with the heat generated on the station, plus there is no easy way to put things outside...
posted by autopilot at 8:57 AM on August 9, 2019 [5 favorites]

It seems like with chilly, chilly outerspace right there that it would be easy to serve things cold.

Presumably cycling things out into space in a retrievable manner is enough of a hassle that they don't do it capriciously. It's not like you can just open a window and set a bag of water out in vacuum to chill.

(Also, its not too clear to me how a bag of water placed in space would actually react, due to the dual effects of low temperature and vacuum. If the bag were incompletely sealed, the water would spray out as it boiled and then freeze immediately into ice-dust, but mostly outside the bag. If the bag were sealed... I'm not a physicist or chemist, and my thermodynamics is weak, and I'm not clear how the pressure level outside of a flexible membrane like a bag would effect the vaporization temperature of water inside. If it boiled, there's a good chance it'd rupture the bag.)
posted by jackbishop at 8:59 AM on August 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

In weightlessness, it is easy to lose things. It is not unusual in a group of six for someone’s spoon to have floated off.


FirstOff-world problems.
posted by darkstar at 9:00 AM on August 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

Space isn't cold. It isn't anything, and it isn't much interested in helping you vent heat. That's why space suits need cooling and not heating - without cooling, the waste heat from every calorie your body burns becomes a new roommate.
posted by quillbreaker at 1:38 PM on August 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

I used to love watching Pettit's demo videos of eating in space, but he has one of those voices that sounds like his nose is clogged and he sometimes goes for a long time without audibly inhaling. It was exhausting for me to listen to for some reason, and I used to have to take deep breaths to avoid sympathetically asphyxiating.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:34 PM on August 11, 2019