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Beer Space .... or publicity stunt?

Leafing through the magazine Vanity Fair, published by the Corriere della Sera, I stumbled upon an article written by John F. Bignami entitled "Space Beer? Better vodka."

The author is a piece of the Accademia dei Lincei, has a degree in physics and more deals space research, was also president of the Italian Space Agency.

You may wonder why this extensive preamble, to be honest I was not sure whether or not to publish the news that has such a scientific basis, but to a casual eye may seem more a publicity stunt.

I think the article is worthy of being mentioned and shown in this blog, which aims to highlight all the news from science. Let's see what you wrote Bignami.

< If you happen to visit Japan in the coming weeks, do not forget to enter the lottery for the brewery Sapporo remove the names of 60 lucky people who can drink the Space Beer. This is a seemingly normal beer, but unique because it was made with barley grown on the International Space Station. Experiments in agriculture are being made space for several years to develop cultivation techniques in the absence of gravity, to allow astronauts to travel to Mars to have salad and fresh vegetables.

Given the limited space available, the barley was grown on a few square decimetres, and the bottles are produced a few dozen. Surely Sapporo, which had sponsored the initiative, he could earn by auctioning the bottles.

Crisis or not, buyers would not be missed. Instead, the brewery Japanese preferred to use the opportunity for publicity, leaving the choice of the lucky few tasters to luck.

Not that Sapporo will become the official supplier of beer to the ISS. The absence of gravity plays awful tricks on liquids, which can not fall from the bottle into the glass but they must be sucked. Furthermore, bubbles do not move upwards to form the foam but remain suspended in the liquid, with predictably nasty results. Same is true, unfortunately, for the champagne and then nothing toast to the astronauts.

With the exception of Russians, the vodka has no bubbles >. (Source: Vanity Fair January 14, 2009)