Urine Passes NASA Taste Test

Ponca City, We love you writes "Astronauts flying aboard space shuttle Endeavour are delivering a device to the International Space Station that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far. Among the ship's cargo is a water regeneration system that distills, filters, ionizes, and oxidizes wastewater — including urine — into fresh water for drinking or, as one astronaut puts it, 'will make yesterday's coffee into today's coffee.' The US space agency spent $250M for the water recycling equipment but with the space shuttles due to retire in two years, NASA needed to make sure the station crew would have a good supply of fresh water. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. In space, there's an additional challenge: steam doesn't rise, so the entire distillation system is spun to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine. The water has been thoroughly tested on Earth, including blind taste tests that pitted recycled urine with similarly treated tap water. 'Some people may think it's downright disgusting, but if it's done correctly, you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth,' said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper."

Comments

HOWEVER

[FunkyRider]

you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth. - It might be the case physically/chemically, but not psychologically.... "Look, I'm drinking purified pee and it's tasty!" God...

Re:HOWEVER

[chill]

From your high userid I can identify you as a noob. For future reference, these types of comments are best posted ANONYMOUSLY. God help you if anyone knows your real name. I foresee a future employer doing a google search on your various aliases and THAT comment turning up.

More like "not far enough"

[RobertB-DC]

Oh yeah, funny, astronaut pee. But for crying out loud (and losing valuable water in the process), what is so hard to understand about a closed system?

"Going too far" is spending millions of dollars to send precious DHMO to the space station, when there are perfectly good pre-assembled dihydrogen monoxide molecules being blown out into the vacuum.

Childish

[Dan East]

It's bad enough that the mainstream media has been acting like a bunch of prepubescent children over the urine recycling, but now Slashdot has to get into the game as well?

"that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far"

Uh, nope, it doesn't leave me wondering that at all. In fact, when I first read about it I was rather surprised that the ISS wasn't recycling urine already. Any manned moon-base, or long-duration trip to reach Mars, would absolutely require the recycling of urine.

disgusting?

[pescadero]

Why is that so disgusting? All the water you drink was probably pee at some point anyway.

Recycling too far? Heck no

[Titoxd]

Although it makes for a nice Beeb quip, no, it is not too far. Sending water into low-Earth orbit is not cheap (a launch delta-V of ~ 9 km/s) , and sending it to other places like the Moon and Mars is even more expensive. That's why it is necessary to begin testing and using this technology, where it is possible to actually send replenishment water in case something doesn't work properly.

Re:Tell that to the guy

[Captain Splendid]

Tell that to the guy in this movie

WTF? You should have linked to Dune, not frigging Waterworld! Now go hand in your geek card.