You don't have to be a rocket scientist to brew a good cup of coffee, but maybe it helps. A startup company certainly thinks so and is taking steps toward being the first coffee company in history to roast beans in what might be the ideal place: space. Space Roasters is a small firm with a big idea that has been percolating for some time: Send coffee beans approximately 100 miles (161 km) into space in a pressurized capsule. When the capsule comes plummeting back down, it will provide the ideal place for the beans to be roasted to perfection, as they float around gravity-free and thus not face the troubles associated with uneven roasting in spinning drums at ground level. Re-entry will provide all the heat they need. The founders have set their sights on 2020 as the date when they'll offer that first scoop of space-seared beans, first in Dubai and then elsewhere. The price for such extravagance, while not determined yet, will almost certainly be sky-high.
Raising a cup to coffee-brewing:
- Brazil is by far the biggest coffee-growing country, supplying about a third of the world's coffee beans.
- The most-expensive coffee, priced at about $600 USD per pound, is collected from the feces of the Asian palm civet, which eats but can't digest coffee beans.
- Coffee beans aren't actually beans; they're the seeds of the cherry-like berries that grow on coffee plants.