This Glass Will Let You Enjoy Whiskey Microgravity

Now that whiskey is being aged in space, it seems only fitting that there should be a way to enjoy the results in low gravity. Fortunately, this glass provides a way to sip the stuff en route to the stars.

Developed by Open Space Agency’s James Parr for distillery Ballantine, the glass is designed to provide a pleasant way of drinking whiskey in microgravity without having to resort to sucking at a straw. So how does it work? Well, there’s a convex steel base plate coated with rose gold, which provides a large enough surface tension to hold the whiskey in place and prevent it from disappearing into your surroundings in giant blobs.

A sip from the glass draws the whiskey up a spiral channel etched into the surface of the medical-grade PLA plastic. And if you’re alarmed at the prospect of drinking from something that feels like a child’s cup, Parr has you covered: A special metallic mouth piece provides the cold feel of glass. That means that the thing is safe to use in space—nobody wants a drunken astronaut scattering broken glass in the ISS, after all.

There are some other neat touches, too: a one-way valve at the base allows a special whiskey bottle to fill it with a shot without leaking, and a magnet in the base allows it to be placed on a surface without floating away. Ballantine haspublished more details about the design process on Medium, if you’re really interested.

Of course, the chances of any of use sipping whiskey in space are some way off. But it may still prove the most exciting way to try out Japanese distillery Suntory’s space-aged whiskey.