Is it possible to employ a drinking straw while in space? If so, would it some out in drops instead of a stream? :o
Provided the container is non-rigid and there’s no leak around the straw, there’s no reason you couldn’t consume liquids with a straw. The liquid would come out in a stream, as you’re used to on earth.
And you might get by with a rigid container that has a one-way valve to admit air to replace the liquid you’ve drunk. But you’d then have to cope with the problem that the liquid may not congregate at the inlet end of your straw.
I remember as a kid seeing video of an astronaut “pouring” some beverage into midair. It would clump up in a viscous ball of sorts, and the astronaut would plunk a straw into the middle of the floating ball and drink through it.
Presumably not in the astronauts’ handbook, but everyone has to have fun once in a while!
I vaguely remember seeing them drink out of squeezable pouches somewhat like Capri-Sun packages, in some movie – Mission to Mars, I think. However, they were also drinking soft drinks, presumably because Coke paid the producers, which I know they don’t do, because the CO2 does weird unpleasant things in zero-gravity. So take that FWIW…
You’d almost HAVE to use a drinking straw, or some such device, in zero gravity. An open cup wouldn’t work. At the very least you’d need a bag with a suckable hole (!).
Which, as far as the physics is concerned, is the same thing.
“in space” is not the same thing as “in zero gravity,” or its functional equivalent, microgravity. “In space” can mean "in the absence of matter, or more particularly, "in the absence of an atmosphere. If that’s what’s meant by the question, then I’m thinking that the answer may be no, you can’t simply suck a liquid up a straw, because that works by virtue of the fact that there develops a differential in the air pressure between the air inside the straw and the air on the surface of the liquid in the glass. That differential basically pushes down on the surface and pushes the liquid up into your mouth. If there’s no atmosphere to exert pressure, sucking on the straw isn’t going to do anything. There would be no air in the straw to draw into your mouth and there would be no way to create any differential, and you couldn’t drink any liquid that way.
If you’re in space in the absence of an atmosphere, I doubt you’d be terribly worried about drinking. Breathing would be more of a concern. That’s my take anyway.
If there’s no atmosphere to exert pressure, the liquid in question is going to evaporate rapidly, so it’s moot. I think the question applies to a pressurized free-fall environment, such as a space capsule in free orbit.
As lissner said, you’d almost have to have a straw. Some science fiction authors–I’m thinking Larry Niven in particular–have characters drinking out of “bulbs”, presumably a round container with a small, closeable opening; you shake it and catch the stream that comes out. In the film 2001: A Space Odyessy, it is often claimed that there is a technical error in the scene on the shuttle where Heywood Floyd is drinking out of a container, as after he stops sucking on the straw the liquid retreats into the cup. I prefer to think that a cup designed for use in microgravity would actually be designed to maintain a slight negative internal pressure so as to draw liquid back in rather than to let it flow out.
Free floating liquids and food particles can be a hazard to equipment; on the Gemini 3 flight, Gus Grissum and John Young were officially reprimanded for bringing a corned beef sandwich on the flight.
Stranger
True, but the thread title does say “Zero gravity”.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s both Pepsi and Coke sent specially designed cans of soft drinks up on one of the shuttle flights. One of the cans didn’t work at all, and I don’t remember what the other one was like, but when the astronauts got back to Earth, they quickly figured out that the can which didn’t work, was a dummy. Seems that one of the soft drink companies discovered that the other one was going to be sending a can up, and called up NASA and asked to be able to do the same. When the company found out that they wouldn’t have enough time to get something ready, they just made something which looked like it might work.
On the Apollo missions, the astronauts had plastic bags with spouts on them that the astronauts used as straws. On the shuttle, they have actual straws that they use. I’ve seen films of the astronauts drinking their dinner which looked almost identical to the scene in 2001.