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ISS Gets New Recycling Gear, Ready For Larger Crew
TnGoastiiaiu submitted a space.com story that expands on coverage we've had earlier about improvements being made to the ISS to increase crew capacity. He writes "ISS gets new recycling gear that transforms human waste to drinking water. Some of the water will be used to get Oxygene, too. This way it will soon be possible to host more crew members. " Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Are they bringing any freeze-dried potatoe?
* Transform human waste to drinking water
* ???
* Profit!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Jean-Michel Jarre songs are made of water? Who knew?
It comes in a Jarre, with a slight whiff of cheese.
the number of crew members aboard the ISS was limited by the size of the escape vehicle.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
What's Oxygene?
It is one of the two types of Atomes that make up Watere. The other is Hydrogene.
If you have any other questions about Chemistrye, I'll be happy to answer them for you!
Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't webmasters die along with the 90's?
The page looks fine on IE too.
...Not that I use Internet Explorer or anything!
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
Waste hydrogen? I would have expected them to have some use for that.
The obvious thing to do with hydrogen is to use it as fuel. But think about it: burning it would undo the electrolysis by consuming all the oxygen generated, so unless they are looking for a way to convert electricity into a chemical fuel, it isn't very useful...
if oxygen is scarcer than energy, burning stuff isn't a sensible thing to do
All the water on Earth is essentially recycled urine at this point.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You could still use it as fuel. Pressurize it using solar power and use it as an unburned positioning jet. If you're throwing it away anyway, you could get some use from it.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I think it's enormously ironic that CmdrTaco can criticize anyone for website design.
Not a typewriter
That too.
Booked for ones of the last shuttle launches is the Sabatier unit. This takes CO2 from the scrubbers and H from the OGA and produces H2O and methane. The H2O is then fed back into the OGA, methane is dumped. Though not needed for the ISS to function, it's a testbed for a WPA -> OGA -> SAB process which through normal water intake by the astros would allow for >=80% of the oxygen needed for a Mars trip. Or so we hope. Until then the H is useless as just about anything you'd want it for requires O2 and it's rather dangerous to keep around. The OGA has been up there for a year or so. Every few months when a progress brings some bags of water we go through a week of activations. This was actually the big reason that they had to fix the solar arrays last year. The OGA needs a decent amount of power and typically runs only during day time. About 60 out of every 90 minutes.
Thanks for being the first person to notice this and post about it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Best use is react with CO2 to form methane and water. Methane can be expelled thru resitojets (believe that is the right name) (electrically heated nozzles) to generate minor trust.