A bottle of champagne from the French brand Mumm will be on board when a capsule of the American space agency Axiom Space, scheduled to depart before the end of 2023. The bubbly spirit has been designed to be drunk in space.
“Three, two, one, liftoff” Destination? The Axiom module of the International Space Station. The agency will take a bottle of Mumm Stellar champagne, adapted to space, in its luggage.
At first glance, the operation seems like a planetary communication stunt, but what if it actually made sense? To understand it, you have to put yourself in the place of the astronauts, to think that they spend months cut off from the world, without touching land, without eating or even seeing real food.
Octave De Gaulle, designer at the head of the Spade firm, which specializes in space design, gives his point of view:
“Imagine a crew in their capsule on their way to March for five months, whose members have not seen a fruit or vegetable since their departure, are no longer in direct dialogue with Earth. They are confined to one or two rooms, sleep in sleeping bags hung on a wall… And one day, it’s the birthday of one of them, or Christmas. How to mark this moment? With the champagne that we have developed, they will have a moment of conviviality and humanity. It’s not about drinking, risking drunkenness, but about recreating up there a ritual that we know on Earth, where it is impossible to realize it for the moment. ”
Something very simple to achieve on Earth, like sharing a moment of conviviality around a bottle of alcohol, becomes a major challenge in space. A challenge that the Spade firm has taken up, in collaboration with the Mumm champagne house.
Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar is presented in a 1 cl flask. From a design point of view, nothing is stylized but everything is optimized. The bottle, or rather the flask, responds to practical rather than aesthetic constraints. The agency has imagined an aluminum shell with a porthole to check that the glass is not damaged.
What composition for the space?
The champagne that escapes from the neck of the glass takes the form of a large line of white foam, mobile and moving, which floats in the air (no surprise) and is deformed into funny curves. No glass in weightlessness but supports in the shape of golf tees on which the foam shapes are stuck.
To bring it to the mouth, it is not a question of drinking it, the product transforming itself with the weightlessness. It is only when it comes into contact with the palate that the material changes into liquid.
The composition of this cosmic champagne is not the one found in classic bottles. It has been subtly modified to adapt to the conditions of tasting in weightlessness.
It remains to be seen what astronauts will think of this interstellar beverage and whether this combination will transport them even further into the seventh heaven.
Read also >[Luxus+ Magazine] A short history of luxury: Mumm, the “Champagne of the Sovereign of England”
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