While various contraptions have been developed to better facilitate the actual consumption of beverages (most notably, an anti-gravity whiskey glass), getting the drink into the cup tends to be a little more difficult. And in the case of coffee, you can’t just boil water and pour it into some instant grounds — much less add milk and sugar. So instead, it all comes prepackaged in the now telltale silver container, with a label that reads, “coffee with cream and sugar substitute.” How delightful.
To actually make the coffee, the 43-year-old former army major demonstrates how he places the package into a machine that looks like it would be more at home in a doctor’s office than in a kitchen, whereupon hot water is added to the contents inside. And then, just like any other liquid aboard a spacecraft, Peake is able to drink the concoction through a straw. So no, it’s not a Starbucks frappuccino by any stretch of the imagination, but it gets the job done.
After Peake’s six-month tenure aboard the ISS, there’s no question that a nice, normally brewed cup of coffee will be first on the list of must-haves on good ol’ Planet Earth. Because sometimes, there’s really no substitute for waking up and smelling the coffee.
