This node is fictional. Refer to Continental Class Space Battleships.
It is the aim of the Confederate Navy to provide the highest quality of life achievable aboard its ships. Free hot and cold quality beverages are a necessity to guarantee this quality.
There is usually one Navy standard beverage dispenser (2145 model, 2170 modification) per 15 Navy or Marine Corps personnel. For a Continental Class battleship, this means more than 170 machines. Considering that some will always be out of service, it has been decided to install 15 machines per deck, which adds up to a total of 180 machines on 12 decks. On a typical deck, five machines are installed in suitable niches of frequented corridors, while ten are installed in or near the most numerously crewed crew stations.
Every beverage dispenser comprises a hot section and a cold section. The hot section serves coffee, tea and a variety of instant beverages. The cold section provides fresh water as well as several soft drinks. All water required by the machine is drawn from a buffer tank that is refilled from the ship's water supply network; every machine is also equipped with an uninterruptible power supply (buffer battery) and will thus continue operating for about half a watch (four hours) of normal usage when the ship's power grid should fail.
- Coffee
- is made cup-by-cup by grinding up a small amount of coffee beans and brewing it with boiling water heated in a flash-tube boiler. Coffee whitener, sugar and other dry additives can be added on demand. Freshly grinding coffee beans for each cup guarantees the best possible coffee flavour.
- Tea
- is made by the same process, but the grinder will grind up pellets of highly-compressed broken tea leaves and the tea will be left to stand for some minutes, depending on the user's personal preferences. Before serving, the tea crumbs are centrifuged off.
- Instant beverages
- comprise hot chocolate, vegetable soup and various other branded products. They are simply mixed with boiling water and then served.
- Fresh water
- comes from a flow cooler. On demand, it can be mixed with pressurised CO2.
- Soft drinks
- are made by mixing fresh water, CO2 and various branded soft drink extracts.
The beverage dispensers do not dispense cups. They will only operate when a beaker is placed beneath the spout. Every crew member is supplied with a beaker with a name tag and they are urged to always keep it handy. A rapid beaker cleaning device is integrated into every dispenser; essentially, it is a rotating brush with an integrated water nozzle.
Operations and maintenance of the beverage machines is the duty of the respective deck gang. Because all the machines are connected to the ship's telemetry network, any member of the gang can at any time control any of the machines' parameters on any computer console and alert others to deal with the issue or do it themselves if they're near. The overall construction of the beverage machines is very rugged. It has been estimated that, in a battleship under fire, the beverage dispensers will be the last system to fail (failure meaning that more than 1/3 of the dispensers completely cease to operate). | 
