Can you get drunk in space?
Wine not.
It’s summer. It’s not like you need more ideas to have a drink, okay, but, food & drink is pretty much all that keeps us at Mucho awake at night –that and going to the fridge– so, here we are, asking the important questions of our time: can you get drunk in space?
The short answer is yes, technically, you can get woozy out there; now, legally… Not yet. That means no fancy Tapatio tequila-party with the ultimate view — the guys at NASA determined a long time ago that drinking in space is prooooobably not the best idea. However, let your inner-geek run wild and read on to find out why beer is not for microgravity, & why space tourism at the hands of private aerospace companies like Space X and Virgin Galactic is the imaginative drinker’s only hope. Be warned: there’s a couple of mean puns ahead.
Getting high
Out of the 600 people that have gone above the Kármán line, the point marking the official beginning of space, only one American and a handful of Russians are known to have had some liquid courage in space. And you would think they could be spared a little something to calm the nerves in a treacherous non-human-friendly environment.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin famously admitted having one zip of wine –an amount wobbling teenagers confess to when caught drinking by their parents– after he and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969; although granted, he reported he was simply taking communion. The Russians, on the other hand, were way more chilled about the whole thing. At MIR, the country’s space station operating from 1986 to 2001, astronauts were allowed some Cognac for a little spacing out (make no mistake, this pun was planned since I was born). Reportedly, it was good for their immune system.
Why the no-fun policy? Although there is a solid “don’t drink and drive” a million-dollar spacecraft argument to be made, there was a time where wine was actually being contemplated as part of the Skylab capsule-based menu. NASA actually selected a Paul Masson California Rare Cream Sherry, which casually has a slightly higher content of alcohol than normal wines (we would have gone for lighter and more budget friendly French Cabernet but hey, that’s just us), for its stable quality when repackaging, as it needed to be put in a special container preventing leaks. However, bad news came during the initial flight tests in a reduced gravity aircraft when just the smell of the fermented grapes emanating through the straw of plastic wine containers resulted in several astronauts getting sick in zero gravity. You’re welcome for that mental image…
Houston, we might have a problem.
Aside from the $250,000 needed to get on board of Virgin’s commercial spaceflight (more on that in a minute), I’ll present you with some considerations before making your purchase:
Firstly, there is no getting drunk faster in space like in planes. Some studies even suggest that there’s no evidence to support us getting drunk any faster in planes, so who knows why I acted the way I did that one time…
Secondly, here’s a thing about microgravity: it means there is not enough gravity force in space crafts to help gas and liquid separate, so any beer bubbles inside of your stomach won’t be drawn to the bottom of it and would result in, well… Some lovely soggy burps! So, no thanks, and also, this would clearly rule out my dear friend Prosecco. What’s space travel without Prosecco?!
As if that wasn’t enough, here’s another effect for you in space: there is a numbing of the taste buds causing event the finest food to taste bland — ps: we are not so cool with this.
Space tourism and the Space Glass
Although alcohol is banned from space, commercial flights might be soon a reality and there will be no NASA to object to a few tipples. With space tourism currently being coveted by ambitious companies like Boeing, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, some people are already thinking about catering and getting their products in space. For all of you in the food industry tempted by the space tourism market projections (more than $34 billion in 2021), let me just say you have some competition. Cue the Space Glass. There are people on this planet who actually got paid to develop the perfect glass design to drink whiskey in space. If you’d like to see what that looks like, there’s a trailer about it featuring a guy that seems to have had, I’d like to think, one too many at 00:36.
All in all, although from a foodie perspective it is a dire picture and it won’t be us out there, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when in 2021 you see some Boomerang’s of people toasting weird glasses out in the stratosphere. As for me, at just 250K short, I guess some wine, some normal un-capsulated food and a little moonwalk dance should do for tonight.
