What's the Buzz on Alcohol in Space?

There hasn't been any official research into the effects of alcohol on the body in space, but at least a few astronauts and cosmonauts have imbibed. Learn about the history and potential future of booze in space in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey, brain Stuff,
Flour and Vogel bomb. Here. In September, a new breakthrough
in space technology was uncorked, especially designed bottle that will
make it possible to drink champagne in the microgravity environment
of space. The bottle contains two chambers, one for the

(00:22):
champagne and the other for a valve that uses the
carbon dioxide in the champagne to eject foamy little alcohol spheres,
which can then be scooped into long stemmed glasses for sipping.
Once inside the mouth, the spheres turn back huala into
liquid champagne. This space champagne, as the Agency France Press reported,

(00:44):
is envisioned as an amenity for space horsts, who someday
may be taking pleasure trips with private space flight operators.
If future recreational astronauts do get the chance to savor
some of the bubbly, it won't be the first time
that alcohol has been consumed in space. The practice goes
back to the early days of the Soviet space program,
when the U S sr S doctors reportedly sent cosmonauts

(01:06):
into orbit with rations of cognac. One former cosmonaut told
NBC News. We used it to stimulate our immune system
and on the whole to keep our organisms in tone.
Later on, cosmonauts were given a liquor containing jin sing,
a root that's a traditional herbal remedy for improving energy
and concentration. NASA, in contrast, generally has prohibited astronauts from

(01:29):
drinking not just in space, but also within sixteen hours
of a space launch, but the agency has wavered from
its teetotaling stance at times. There reportedly was a plan,
for example, to allow the Apollo eight crew to drink
a small ration of brandy to go with their Christmas
meal of dehydrated bacon cubes and turkey gravy stuffing, but
Commander Frank Borman decided that they should forego the alcohol.

(01:53):
On the Apollo eleven trip to the Moon in nineteen
sixty nine, astronaut Buzz Aldrin did open a small plastic
container of wine. It was almost certainly the first food
or drink consumed during the trip, but it was so
that he, a Presbyterian Church elder, could take communion. According
to NBC News, as former NASA food developers Charles T.
Borland and Gregory L. Vatt detail in their book The

(02:15):
Astronauts Cookbook, Tails, Recipes, and more. NASA considered providing astronauts
on the sky Lab mission in the nineteen seventies with
sherry packaged inflexible plastic pouches was built in drinking tubes,
but the idea was mixed for fear of negative publicity
and because apparently the beverage, although perfectly palatable on the ground,
filled the cabin with an intensely nauseating smell on a

(02:38):
test flight that approximated low gravity with free fall. And
NASA report titled Living Aloft Human Requirements for Extended Space
Flight contemplated the pros and cons of drinking on space
flights and in future settlements on the Moon or other planets.
It noted it is unlikely that alcohol as a social
beverage will find its way into space, at least until

(03:01):
relatively large and stable settlements are established. Alcohol as a
recreational drug may be keenly missed by space travelers, since
there is evidence that alcohol plays an important social role
in exotic environments. Generally, though, today's space travelers have to
wait until they get back to Earth before they have
a drink because of alcohol's chemical volatility. That is, its

(03:22):
tendency to vaporize, astronauts aren't allowed to have it on
the International Space Station. We spoke via email with Daniel G. Huo,
a spokesman at NASA's Johnson's Space Center. He said that
this ban is due to quote the negative effects that
alcohol can have on the water recovery system, which draws
in water from a number of sources, including cabin condensation.

(03:44):
The bed applies not just to beverages, but to any
sort of product containing alcohol, such as aftershave or mouthwash.
There's another tricky issue about drinking in space. Not much
is known about the effect of alcohol consumption on the
human body in the space environment, which already is no
to alter everything from the immune system to hand eye coordination.
No official studies have been done, so we really don't

(04:06):
know whether the space environment would intensify the intoxicating effect
of alcohol, or how an orbital hangover would compare to
one that results from a bender on Earth. While we
don't have much science on alcohol and space, for what
it's worth, there has been research on the effects of
alcohol consumption at high altitudes on Earth. In study, for example,

(04:27):
some male subjects drink a quantity of one hundred proof
vodka adjusted to their weight. For a one pound man
that's about seventy kilos, it was about four shots, and
then they spent the day in a simulated twelve thousand,
five hundred foot elevation environment that's about thirty eight hundreds.
They were then compared to other subjects who didn't drink
and or who stayed at sea level. The drinkers experienced

(04:50):
impaired performance on a battery of tasks, with older subjects
performing worse than younger ones, but there wasn't a significant
difference between drinkers at high altitudes and those who stayed
on the ground. Although not much alcohol has been consumed
in space, researchers are studying the creation of it on
the I s S. Scotch maker Art Begs set samples
of unaged booze and wood up to study how whiskey

(05:13):
might age differently in space, and Budweiser sent along batches
of barley seeds in a scientific effort to understand the
effects of microgravity on beer ingredients. Today's episode was written
by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tyler Clang. To
learn more about the history and science of space, food
and beverages, check out the episode of my other podcast

(05:35):
Saver called ground Control to Major nom brain. Stuff is
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