A Coffee Cup

The timing for this article couldn’t be better: The inventor of one of the most compelling solutions for drinking coffee in space has just returned to Earth for the last time. To me—a designer—this is how I knew him. But Donald R. Pettit’s legacy extends far beyond that. With over 590 days in space and 13 hours of spacewalks, he’s experimented with metal 3D printing in orbit, studied plant growth under varying water conditions, and investigated fire behavior in microgravity.

I discovered his capillary cup surprisingly late. In 2021, while writing my master’s thesis on The Translation of Objects from Earth to Space, I needed a simple, everyday activity to anchor my core question: Why is industrial design valuable for the commercialization of space travel?

Drinking coffee emerged as the perfect case study. It’s a ritual for millions, a multisensory pleasure, and an experience people would undoubtedly want to preserve in space. We’ve developed countless methods to perfect it, yet the process remains methodical and almost instructional—so straightforward that IKEA could diagram it.

But before introducing the capillary cup, we need to understand what drove Dr. Pettit to rethink coffee in microgravity:

Taste and Smell: In zero gravity, olfactory sensitivity drops by ~20%, dulling taste as well. This explains why astronauts douse their food in hot sauce—without it, meals taste like bland paste.
Container: Coffee (hot, in this case—we’ll ignore cold brew) is served in a sealed pouch, drunk through a straw. This strips away half the experience: the aroma of fresh brew, the warmth of the cup in your hands.
No Spills: Microgravity is fragile. A single floating droplet could wreck havoc on the ISS’s ventilation.

(Important: These observations are my own analysis as a designer. I haven’t spoken to Dr. Pettit to confirm his motivations align with my speculations.)

Figure 1 - Astronauts showing how yesterday’s coffee becomes today’s coffee. In the ISS urine is purified into clean water for the consumption of the astronauts on board.

Continuing here

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Disclaimer:

Let's design for space responsibly, without forgetting where we come from.

BUT - Before we normalize life beyond Earth, we owe our home planet relentless care and repair.

Space shouldn't be an escape - our planet is and will always be our home.

I explore space design because human expansion beyond Earth seems inevitable and I am very passionate about the exploration of the Universe.

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Let’s work together