When Coke & Pepsi fought for supremacy in space

IN SPACE TRAVEL, the firsts are often what matter most: the first woman in orbit and the first man to walk on the moon, or, less famously, the first time astronauts grabbed a wobbling satellite with their hands.

- JOSEPH DRAGOVICH

Yet in the 1980s, America's two biggest soft drink companies raced for another milestone: to serve the first fizzy drink in orbit.

One of the greatest excesses of the cola wars happened as NASA was transitioning from the prestige-driven programme of the Apollo years towards our modern era of commercial spaceflight, which has been dominated by companies willing to land a Nokia 4G/LTE communications system on the moon, or launch a mannequin-driven Tesla Roadster into deep space.

To the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, the commercially minded shuttle programme was a perfect marketing opportunity.

Forty years on, a NASA astronaut remembers positive moments of the soft drink space race.

"We did our job and it was kind of fun," said Loren Acton, a space shuttle payload specialist. But others who faced the cola giants' rivalry were less charitable.

When the cola wars got political