Space Glass - The glass enjoys whiskey in space

Scotland's Ballantine makes a special glass so you can sip whiskey in a zero gravity environment. The glass, called Space Glass, was designed with a special shape to reproduce the drinking experience exactly as we would with a normal glass on Earth. Of course Space Glass users will be astronauts and space travelers in the future.

Astronauts on the ISS International Space Station often complain that they lack "Earth-like" things in a zero gravity environment. To solve this, Ballantine commissioned the Open Space Agency team led by designer James Parr to create the glass. Parr said: "Our goal is to develop a glass of whiskey that can be used in micro gravity conditions - the science of zero gravity. It is important that we focus on regenerating. a style of drinking wine on the Space Glass to ensure a familiarity like what we still use on Earth The end result is a product with many elements that make up this style, from the way liquid (wine) is poured into the glass until you sip from the glass ".

Some Space Glass prototype designs.

For a year, the development team studied how liquid or whiskey moved in a zero gravity environment while creating a series of prototypes of the Space Glass . They used a variety of mechanisms such as wrapping around a glass of micro-tubes or using rotating discs and rotating bases similar to centrifuges. However, these designs are still not realistic. The team tested the prototype glass at ZARM Drop Tower - a 146m-high tower located in Bremen city, Germany specialized in the implementation of micro-gravity experiments and applied space technology (Zentrum fur angewandte Raumfahrttechnologie und Mikrogravitation - ZARM). Space Glass is made of plastic and 3D printed. The reason plastic was chosen was that it allowed the research team to fabricate prototypes faster and also allowed astronauts to produce themselves on ISS in the near future.

The glass has a spherical design similar to a normal glass, but it actually has a closed cup and removable base for washing. The round design of the cup is fit in the palm and the spiral-shaped convex bottom is covered with rose gold to create weight when held on Earth. In space, the "weight" of the glass comes from a magnet that creates a 10kg traction, giving the pitcher cup and the ability to hold it when placed on a table in a zero gravity environment.

According to Ballantine, they used gold to wrap the cup in part to increase the aesthetics of the product, based on the design of the sun visor on the astronaut suit, partly because the material did not affect. to the taste of whiskey.

So is the motif on the bottom of the glass for decoration? Of course not, in a gravityless environment, whiskey is like all other liquids that will stick like a lump of jelly and this spiral-shaped component will create surface tension to keep the liquid back.

How does the mouth of the closed glass drink alcohol? Upwards into the cup, Ballantine designed small spiral pipes pointing up to the top of the glass. It acts as a straw, based on capillary phenomenon to get whiskey inside and put up a small golden mouth clamped on the top of the glass. Users will put their lips into this piece of gold, gently sipping alcohol to avoid losing taste by the plastic components of the glass.

How to pour wine into a glass? The bottom of the glass has a one-way valve, fitted to the standard wine pourer on Ballantine bottles.

Parr said: "We used inertia and based on the notion that whiskey would stand still while the bottle and the glass would fly around. The first move was to pour whiskey into the bottom of the glass, the second movement. To stir the whiskey on the glass, let the heat from the hand pass through the metal base into the liquid, the third step is to lower the glass before placing the nose on the space where the vapor escapes to experience the sense of smell. The same is to guide the glass up so that the liquid flows into the duct and put the lips on the cup to experience the taste. "

Ballantine also developed a version of the Space Glass Limited Edition glass and Space Whiskey Special Batch . Not only is it meaningful to celebrate, these two versions also mark an achievement of Ballatine - a product that helps solve problems about enjoying things that are normally normal on Earth but hard to normalize. time.

Sandy Hyslop bartender (left) with designer James Parr.

In addition, space whiskey was specially prepared by Ballantine with a stronger smell. Sandy Hyslop, Ballatine's mixing expert, responsible for creating Space Whiskey, said: "In space, you can't experience the smell and taste of the same concentration on Earth. This is It means that I have to make Space Whiskey taste stronger while maintaining the characteristic Ballantine style, and astronauts will miss the taste of their home country, so creating a stronger, sweeter flavor More and more fragrant will be a way for them to store their familiar taste. "