AN UNMANNED CARGO ship loaded with emergency supplies – including a whisky brand name-checked by Bill Murray in Lost in Translation – successfully docked at the International Space Station yesterday.
But thirsty astronauts will have to keep their hands off the golden tipple — it’s for a science experiment.
Drinks giant Suntory sent the booze to space so it could test how time in a zero-gravity environment affects its taste.
Researchers for the company have said that storing the beverage in an environment with only slight temperature changes and limited liquid movement could lead to a mellower flavour.
The unusual cargo was placed inside the 5.5-tonne vessel “Kounotori” (‘stork’ in Japanese), which blasted off from southern Japan last Wednesday attached to an H-IIB rocket.
It was also loaded with food, water, clothing and tools necessary for experiments in space.
Murray’s in-character “for relaxing times…” endorsement of the brand in the 2003 Sofia Coppola film helped raise the profile of the whiskey for western audiences.
And as Yoshi Morita, marketing manager for Suntory International, told the Washington Post, the movie became part of his everyday sales conversations for years.
“At the time, the movie was very helpful to Suntory, because Americans recognised the name,” Morita told the paper in 2012.
“But now, more people want to talk about Japanese whisky because they like the quality.”
With reporting from © AFP, 2015.
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