In Space, No-one Can Spill Your Drink

Space, says Douglas Adams, is big. And dangerous. Full of aliens with blaster guns and huge, gaping, slavering maws, if you believe half of the tosh being churned out at the pictures. This is why it's so terribly important to ensure we're sending the right stuff to explore it.

When you're training to be an astronaut, they prepare you for space travel by hurling you around and around in a huge centrifuge to simulate the high G-forces of liftoff. Or so they say.

Then there's that gizmo what Leonardo da Vinci invented (click to enlarge, ladies) to spin you this way and that, allegedly to see how your body reacts to the disorientation of not knowing which way is 'up'.

And finally there's the so-called Vomit Comet. The clue is in the name. This wonderful piece of low technology allows potential astronauts to actually experience zero gravity, even if only for a few seconds at a time. Stephen Hawking swears by it.

What this means in practice is that, once they're spaceborne, our brave ambassadors to the cosmos should be completely inured against losing the contents of their stomachs after getting totally blootered on Buckie¹.

By this point, you may be wondering why a human space traveller would need to be off his (or indeed her) tits in the first place?

Why, to be ready to make first contact with an alien race, of course!



¹ Intoxicated after imbibing a popular brand of tonic wine.