Form Follows Function: NASA's Zero-Gravity Drinking Cup

This unusual-looking cup was designed by Dr. Mark Weislogel, a former NASA research scientist and expert in fluid dynamics. It has the unusual provenance of having been prototyped not on Earth, but in space. As the story goes, Dr. Weislogel learned that Donald Pettit, an astronaut doing experiments with fluids on the International Space Station in 2008, was getting sick of drinking out of the pouch-and-straw arrangement astronauts use. Weislogel sent Pettit diagrams of something that...