Why creating the perfect cup of coffee really is rocket science

As a rival to the Millennium Falcon or the Starship Enterprise, a proposed spacecraft from entrepreneurs Anders Cavallini and Hatem Alkhafaji is low on sophistication and rocket thrust. In fact, it would be built to carry out only one task: to produce perfectly roasted coffee beans – in outer space. Hence the craft’s name: the Coffee Roasting Capsule.

The capsule – which could be launched next year – would use the heat of re-entry to roast coffee beans as they float inside it in a pressurised tank. The effect would be to roast the beans all over and produce perfect coffee, Cavallini and Alkhafaji claim in a recent issue of the space journal Room. They say that on Earth, beans tumble around, break apart and are scorched by contact with the hot surfaces of the roaster. “But if gravity is removed, the beans float around in a heated oven, giving them 360 degrees of evenly distributed heat and roasting to near perfection.”

The capsule – which would initially carry around 300kg of coffee beans – would be fired on a rocket to a height of around 200km, taking the task of making the ideal cup of coffee to new heights. The beans would then be roasted in the heat generated by the craft’s 20-minute re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, with temperatures in the pressurised tank being kept to around 200C. In the interview, the two entrepreneurs claimed they were already in discussion with private rocket companies such as Rocket Lab and Blue Origins in a bid to find a suitable launcher.

Once back on Earth, the planet’s first space-roasted beans would be used to make coffee that would be sold for the first time in Dubai, where the pair’s company is based. It is not clear how much they would charge for a cup.

Cavallini and Alkhafaji said they hoped to blast their first coffee beans into space next year. However, calls and emails from the Observer to the Space Roasters office received no response last week.

Surprisingly, the Space Roaster concept – should it go ahead – will not be the first attempt to take coffee into space. In 2015, Italian aerospace company Argotec and Italian coffee company Lavazza collaborated on the construction of the ISSpresso, the first espresso coffee machine designed for use in space. It was installed in the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a public-private partnership with the Italian Space Agency.

The first espresso it produced was drunk on 3 May 2015 in a special zero-gravity cup by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. “Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised,” she tweeted.