As I’ve previously covered, scientists have worked to build an espresso machine that can work in the International Space Station (ISS.)
It turns out bringing espresso to space was no easy challenge. According to a recent Bloomberg article the Italian espresso scientists struggled to come up with a version of their espresso machine that meet NASA’s strict safety requirements:
NASA views anything greater than 60 pounds per square inch of pressure as a safety concern, and brewing espresso requires at least twice that. To minimize the danger of a blowout, the engineers replaced the traditional rotary pump with a plunger—like in a syringe—driven by an electric motor with just enough power to do the job, and no more.
But the good news is that all the effort seems to have paid off. So if one day humans do establish a colony on Mars, at least we’ll still be awake when the ship lands.