A new ´chopstick spoon´ to help astronauts eat in space has been designed by Nikolas Grafakos, who hopes that the spoon will help them eat lots of different types of food, especially during longer trips, like to Mars.
Part of the Zero-G Cutlery collection, the new spoon enables astronauts to grab food in the zero gravity environment more easily, as they´re not relying on water surface tension to hold the food on the utensil or gravity to pull it down. Normally, the food needs to be very mushy and wet in order to stick to the spoon.
The spoon that astronauts use now looks like an ordinary spoon, and it´s just a little bit longer. However, the new spoon is something between chopsticks and a spoon, and it allows astronauts to pinch the food at the end and control where the food goes a lot easier. The new spoon could possibly allow the introduction of drier food and more variety in food textures.
Questions:
a) Apart from eating food, what other difficulties do you think astronauts have to overcome?
b) Is there anything that you think needs redesigning - either to make it more functional, or just more modern?