“I wonder if anyone has ever been trashed in space?”

That was the brilliant question posed by Reddit user UltimateShipThe2nd in Reddit’s “Today I Learned” community, and, of course, we had to investigate.

As user Falcoln109 explains:

“I am sure there are a few astronauts who have been at least a bit “buzzed” up there. I am not suggesting they were hammered drunk, but probably one or two have been at least a bit intoxicated before while on orbit. Booze in space, and the different cultural taboos or feelings about it, is actually a bit of an interesting topic to examine.”

You see, NASA has a very complicated history with booze. (Heck, the US in general has a weird relationship with alcohol).

Technically, NASA astronauts are banned from drinking alcohol in space. And this has always been the case. But for a brief time, NASA stopped being so prudish.

In the 1970s, American scientists created “space wine” (aka a creamed sherry) for the astronauts aboard the Skylab space station. But when astronauts tested it on a reduced gravity aircraft, the wine’s smell was so bad that it made them barf.

But let’s be real: When has a little vomit stopped anyone from drinking? Around half the astronauts still wanted their booze onboard, naturally.

The public, however, was outraged when they heard about NASA’s little pet project, since “alcohol taints the purity of astronauts.” NASA responded by banning alcohol indefinitely.

Now the Russians, on the other hand, couldn’t give a crap about alcohol’s “morality issues.”

At a press conference in 2010, Cosmonaut Alexander Lazutkin openly admitted to drinking alcohol in space. After all, as he said,”How can you greet the new year without champagne?”

And the Russians drink of choice, they keep it classy with cognac. In fact, doctors recommended cognac as a remedy to “neutralize the harmful effects of the atmosphere.”

But what about beer? That’s probably something the Russians wouldn’t even touch, considering it causes a whole bunch of problems in space.

For one, beer and cola lose their carbonation in microgravity. You’d need to make a specialized can to keep the carbonation. And obviously this is very costly to create. (NASA did experiment with this back in the day by creating pressurized cans of Coke).

But there’s a much bigger issue with space beer. Carbonation, as you know, makes you burp. And in microgravity, all the food you eat floats to the top of your stomach. So you essentially end up vomiting every time you belch. This is called a “wet burp.”

That didn’t stop NASA—in a partnership with Coors— from brewing beer in space, however. Experimenters were curious to see how fermentation works in microgravity. So in 2001, they brewed about 1 milliliter of beer in space.

One brave soul even tried the beer back on Earth. Interestingly, the space brew was basically the same as terrestrial beer, except that it contained a lower number of yeast cells.

A few years later, Sapporo grew barley on the International Space station. The company used the barley to brew around 100 bottles of beer on Earth. Unsurprisingly, the six-packs sold for a hefty price—$110 dollars a pop.