This is a neat engineering achievement, but is it practical? What's the benefit of pouring the liquid out of a bag into this versus drinking out of the bag directly?
Principals like this are used in fuel/liquid handling in space already to make sure your tanks aren't pure chaos and your pumps don't run dry. A lot of rockets just do ullage burns with different motors to settle their fuel into the bottom of tanks but that's not possible for all fluids if you need to have them moving continuously or can't do burns just to settle them.
> Do you make it in the mug, or do you pour it into the mug after you make it?
The difference is that I make it. On the space station, their beverages are pre-made and pre-packaged. You can see the bags in the linked article.
> Why not pour it into a thermos?
Huh? I generally drink out of a mug, not a thermos, but I've used thermoses as well. Again, this situation is different because I generally make my coffee. It's not pre-made and prepackaged.
> And why don't you exclusively drink prepackaged coffee?
Again, huh? Because the coffee I buy comes as beans. I have to add water, heat it up, etc. I sometimes I drink pre-made coldbrew and I do often drink that out of the package it comes in (the bottle/can).
1. Packets filled with essentially instant coffee that they add hot water to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIT3l9QYnQ
2. An espresso machine similar to a pod-based system. Fairly like an espresso machine on Earth since it relies on pressure. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/08/328130351/wh...
Speaking of, how do they manage smells up there? Is "ISS smell management" someone's job at NASA?
https://www.space.com/international-space-station-smells-eur...