I’m reading through the excellent webcomic Questionable Content (again), and they have a brief storyline that takes place on a space station. At a birthday party, several people get drunk. Has anyone ever gotten drunk in outer space? And how does the human body react differently?
People have consumed alcohol in space. Mainly the Russians, who issued Cognac aboard Mir. NASA had Buzz Aldrin’s Communion on the Moon, and planned Sherry for the menu aboard Skylab, but dropped it when there was a public backlash, and instituted a no alcohol rule. Whether anybody has gotten plastered I don’t know. If so, it would probably be a Russian.
Maybe somebody’s swiped a swig out of some of the science experiments.
As noted in the link, carbonation is a problem for consumption (they don’t allow carbonated soft drinks, either), so beer is out. I wonder about champagne - is the bubbly too bubbly?
Beer would be inadvisable, as the carbonation wouldn’t rise to the top of your stomach… if you drink carbonated beverages in space, you have to control your reflex to burp or you’re likely to throw up.
Gizmodo had an interview with former astronaut Mike Massimino:
We Chatted With an Astronaut About Showering, Farting, and Boning in Space
Yep. yabob had that in the second post.
As has been mentioned the Russians have sent alcoholic beverages to their missions regularly.
I don’t know about the Russian areas of the ISS, but MIR and the earlier Salyut stations certainly did have alcohol. Hell, considering the psychological problems the Russians had in the early long-term missions, I would not be surprised if they wanted to keep them buzzed. They were pretty worried about the effects of sending a woman up, so they enforced a “jovial” attitude during Svetlana Savitskaya’s flight.
NASA has used alcohol for experiments though.
Alcohol does things to people. For one thing, it makes you pee like crazy, and that alone is complicated in space. I’d hate for an astronaut to be listening to Jerry Garcia all night and piss his space suit.
