Let’s be honest, everything is more difficult in space than here on Earth. It’s hard enough just to get into space and bring all of the things humans need to survive. It’s an amazing technological feat for astronauts to live and work on the International Space Station in and of itself. What you might not think about is how different actually living in outer space is. Take for instance the simple act of using a washcloth.
A group of students recently suggested an experiment to be conducted on by astronaut Chris Hadfield on the ISS involving nothing more than squirting some water onto a washcloth and wringing it out. As it turns out, even washcloths are cool when NASA buys them. The cloths themselves are compacted down into a little pucks and have to be unraveled.
Since you can’t just have a bucket of water in space, Hadfield uses what looks like a large Capri Sun pouch to squirt water onto the cloth. The water just floats in little globs until it absorbed by the cloth. The result is incredibly cool. The surface tension of the water means that it sticks to the outside of the cloth and oozes between the astronaut’s fingers like some sort of gel.
Check out the video above, it’s probably the coolest thing you’ll see all day.
[via Boing Boing]
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