Maison Mumm, one of the world’s largest champagne producers, has teamed up with aeronautical design company SPADE to create a “space” bottle. Yes, because you can’t currently drink champagne in space.
This is born for the Axiom Space project, so when it fully commercializes its plans for the space station, the group, based in Houston, Texas, will have the fine brew available.
But it is not enough to have pressurized glass bottles floating in a space habitat: getting champagne into space requires an extra level of effort. Your name will: Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar.
The first space champagne
Cordon Rouge Stellar is poised to become “the first champagne that can be tasted in space and will be embarked on future human space flights,” according to a Press release of the Maison Mumm.
This is what the bottle looks like:
The result of a four-year research and development process, the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar has fulfilled all space requirements with the help of the French space agency Center National d’Etudes Spatiales.
For this, it has had to face a complex set of restrictions on gaseous liquids in the absence of gravitythe pressure contained in the bottle, food compatibility, material specifications, size, ergonomics and intuitive use.
How is it achieved?
The 372ml bottle uses glass for the inner layer, with stainless steel opening and closing devices that secure the champagne in place. The champagne is only found with the inside of the glass bottle and the stainless steel, identical to that of Mumm’s mixing vats in Reims; both materials are used for preservation and to meet regulatory requirements.
Space regulations require that a pressurized liquid container have a second protective layer. The outer liner of the two-layer bottle is aircraft-grade aluminum to protect the inside of the glass bottle, which would be a big deal to break in space. The upper part of the bottle, called the “service” part, has a long neck topped by a cork and a ring. This prevents the cork from opening and helps lock the bottle’s stainless steel mechanism.
To make the traditional champagne bottle and tasting experience as similar as possible, SPADE had to do something about the zero-gravity conditions that would otherwise make uncorking impossible. of the iconic bottle of champagne.
“After uncorking, by pressing the button located at the bottom of the bottle, the champagne comes out through the neck and is collected in the ring that previously held the cork in place”, explains to Dezeen Octave de Gaulle, founder of SPADE.
“When a sufficient amount of champagne has been dispensed, a flick of the wrist separates a sphere of Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar champagne from the ring, which is collected by our specially designed glass and finally tasted by the astronauts.”