Space Station Crew Drinks Recycled Urine

An anonymous reader writes "After the astronauts on the International Space Station finished up their communications with Space Shuttle Atlantis yesterday, the crew on the Space Station did something that no other astronaut has ever done before — drank recycled urine and sweat. The previous shuttle crew that recently returned to Earth brought back samples of the recycled water to make sure it was safe to drink, and all tests came back fine. So on Wednesday, the crew took their recycled urine and said 'cheers' together and toasted the researches and scientists that made the Urine Recycler possible. After drinking the water, they said the taste was great! They also said the water came with labels on it that said 'drink this when real water is over 200 miles away.'"

Comments

Nonsense.

[John Hasler]

> ...the crew on the Space Station did something that no other astronaut has ever done
> before -- drank recycled urine and sweat.

Everyone drinks recycled urine and sweat every day.

Re:Nonsense.

[drinkypoo]

Hell, your sewage is merely treated and released back into the environment.

And by "released back into the environment" what you actually mean is "pumped back into the river". Oh sure, it's "treated", but it's still not REALLY safe to put back in there. So what do we do? We take some water out of the river, make it safe to drink, take a shit in it, then make it kind of safe, then dump it back into the river... so that the next town can pump our shitwater out of the river, and repeat the whole process.

Re:Nonsense.

[TheRaven64]

Humans actually have one of the weakest immune systems out there, mostly because we've been breeding less and less for hardiness (and worse, in the past ~400 years less for intelligence as well) thanks to the "contributions" of the few bright sparks who come up with things like, say, "the crapper" and make it so that those with downright piss-poor immune systems pass them on to the next generation.

This needs slapping with a massive [citation needed]. A mere 400 years is not enough time for significant evolutionary changes. Most animals don't foul their own nests either. Ones that have fixed nests just go a distance away from them and ones that don't just move on afterwards. A toilet just allows us to move our waste away from ourselves easily, rather than moving ourselves away from our waste. It's also worth noting that proper sanitation is not available to a large chunk of the human race (who have not, therefore, had this lack of evolutionary pressure away from developing a strong immune system) and that the average lifespan of these people is around half that of people who do.

Re:Nonsense.

[TheRaven64]

Not to mention the fact that in a number of cases the operation saves the mother; the child was not at risk. The child would have survived anyway, and would have passed on these genes whether the operation took place or not.

Re:Nonsense.

[quanticle]

For the draft to have had an impact on the gene pool, a vast majority of the people who went to war would either have had to be killed or mutilated in a way that rendered them unable to reproduce. Even in the American Civil War, that was not the case.

Can you find me even one example of a war that actually affected the reproductive ability of all of the soldiers that fought in it?

Also, lets not forget that the draft only affects men. Women were excluded, and therefore any gene not on the Y chromosome would have been excluded from being affected.

Re:Nonsense.

[geekoid]

In humans? no it's not enough time for anybig changes.

Your example involves selective breeding by an ;outside' source, us.

But in the natural environments, 400 years just isn't a long time.

We are not, or have been the decedents of the big brave people that went to battle, we are the decedents of the little shit that stayed in the cave and fucked all the women.

Your look is way to myopic. I could say all the people smart enough to avoind the draft and stayed home helped the gene pool, but that to is too myopic.
How many people where drafted? what percentage died before having off spring?
Add to the fact after WWII the ones that did survive fucked like rabbits. So the physically able went to war, and the survivors came back an had kids. Wouldn't that be an evolutionary improvement?

Re:Nonsense.

[Changa_MC]

Most doctors still do not prefer to do a C-section out of convenience - it's a safe surgery, but what I've read indicates that surgery of any kind is still more dangerous and leads to a longer recovery time than drug-assisted natural birth.

Have you actually met any american doctors? They don't give a shit about you.

Re:Nonsense.

[socrplayr813]

Regardless, the filtering process is more than adequate to make the water safe. The fact that astronauts tend to be scientists of at least a reasonable caliber, they'll no doubt understand the science behind it and have no trouble drinking it.

I worked with water filtration in the past and, while I might hesitate slightly on my first sip, I'd have no issue drinking it. I'd bet it's significantly cleaner than most water flowing through pipes on earth.

Re:Nonsense.

[StikyPad]

Zero impact, maybe not, but it only affect a very narrow range of ages, and so excluded the vast majority of healthy parents with healthy children under 18.

And you're assuming that the majority of draftees were killed, which simply isn't the case. 2.1 Million Americans fought in Vietnam, and 58,000 died. It would be hard to argue that, even if all 2.1M died, it would have affected the population at large (genetically), because most of those people had brothers, sisters, children, etc. Furthermore, the Sole Survivor Policy has long been in place to help ensure entire family lines aren't simply wiped out (although for practical matters, it doesn't cover people with no siblings).

Re:Nonsense.

[RpiMatty]

No where in your quoted section is the OP saying that 31% of US births should have been eliminated.
He said that 31% of US births WOULD NOT have happened in the past.

Big difference between saying something would not have happened in the past, and saying something should have been prevented.

The OP is right in the fact that modern science is changing our overall genetic makeup.

Your wife fell off a horse. Maybe she was taught improperly, maybe horses don't like her.
In the past when riding a horse was a primary mode of transport, your wife would be at a disadvantage. If she fell off a horse and couldn't have kids that removes the can't ride a horse trait from the gene pool. Note that this could be a learned behavior. If your wife didn't learn to ride a horse properly, odds are her child would also learn incorrectly.
Had your wife not broken her pelvis and been able to have a natural birth, then the strong bones / knows how to take a fall trait would have been passed on.

Re:Nonsense.

[Kral_Blbec]

That is false logic. I have no idea who Ina May Gaskin is, but I assume she is some registered midwife and has to screen clients to make sure they are healthy and everything is going okay, otherwise she is obligated to pass them on to the doctors.

Living in a desert

[mc1138]

While it may not seem like it the space station is essentially a desert with very little water. This sort of situation really makes it important to loose as little water as possible, and as the astronauts even said when properly treated it tastes great!

Stillsuits next?

[IlluminatedOne]

Hmmmm. The pee levels seem good, needs more sweat. Preferably of the ball variety... Seriously though, this seems like it will have major implications for the future of space travel. One less thing to lug. Its still a closed system, so it won't completely eliminate the need to carry [i]some[/i] water, but still...

Re:How does that make it not "real water"?

[caffeinemessiah]

If it's 2 hydrogen bonded to 1 oxygen in the right form it's "real water" Honestly, the Astronauts should be some that would not have the silly reaction to drinking treated water.

Certainly, but 2 hydrogen bonded to 1 oxygen exists in ripe form in your toilet as well, it's more a question of the additives. And if we did NOT feel an instinctive revulsion towards our own excrement, we would have been wiped out as a species a long time ago after eating our own toxic feces (that rhymes, too). So give those space monkey a break, eh?

Re:How does that make it not "real water"?

[Sockatume]

If someone takes a piss in the vat at the Coca-Cola plant, it's still "real Coca-Cola" to a high empirical degree, but I think you'd still appreciate the psychological distinction between that Coca-Cola and the stuff that came out beforehand. Likewise there's a strong innate (unlearned) notion of contamination in humans that makes this "purified urine" rather than "ever so slightly contaminated water" from the astronauts' perspective.

Re:How does that make it not "real water"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise there's a strong innate (unlearned) notion of contamination in humans

I'd like to see some evidence for that.

If you you have little kids, or have spent any time with them, you'd know that they'll happily put anything in their mouths if you don't stop them. The idea of contamination is deliberately taught to children, using words like "icky," "yucky," and "ohmigodwhatisthatinyourhand."

Big deal! we all do

[petes_PoV]

Water abstracted from rivers that are fed from treatment plants. That contains water from recycled urine. As does rainwater, when urine evapourates into clouds, which then condense into rainfall.

Sadly this story has all the self conscious immaturity you'd expect from a 12 year-old, sniggering because it's about pee. Whatever happened to the grown-ups section of Slashdot?

not sure...

[ilblissli]

I'm really not sure why this is news worthy. Recycled water has been around forever. When I was a little kid I was first introduced to recycled water when my city decided to start a reclaimed water system to be used or lawn irrigation. This was to help stop our aquifer from being depleted so quickly for frivolous stuff like watering the grass. When they proposed this new system one of the water treatment people drank a glass of recycled water to prove to everyone that it was completely safe and would not pose any heath risks to kids playing in sprinklers or drinking from a hose. I'd also like to ask, how do people think submarines stay down for so long without coming back up for 10,000 new bottles of Evian bottled water every few days? (yes we have distilling plants on board most ships to convert salt water to fresh but many also have water treatment/recycling plants as well)

Re:'waterhasnotaste' tag

[RiotingPacifist]

so your not actually tasting the water, just the minerals

Re:How does that make it not "real water"?

[Shakrai]

If someone takes a piss in the vat

What does Budweiser have to do with the ISS?

Re:Singaporeans were the first to drink recycld wa

[mbone]

Basically every city that gets its water from a river drinks the recycled urine etc. from the folks upstream.

And, that is most cities located on rivers.

we also fertilize our food with shit

[circletimessquare]

but i think you'd have a problem if someone gave you a shit pancake to eat, saying it was ok, it was chemically treated to be nutritious and delicious

there is meaning in the massive amount of time and the massive natural filtration that goes into the process you describe, and the artificial tiny distance described in the article between what comes out your ass or your dick, and what winds up in your cup and on your plate

when that distance is reduced via technology, the squeamishness you haughtily assume to be superior to is really just a basic and simple form of empathetic discomfort. its intrinsic to the way your mind works. its simple psychology and its real, and you are in fact not superior or immune to it, unless you are a cyborg

what you describe is not self-conscious immaturity, its basic human symbolic thinking. and you need to understand it (and know your own mind better), if you ever hope to remain meaningful to the human society around you

FUD

[Thaelon]

"Recycled sweat & urine" is basically FUD.

Sweat is just water with salt, some oils and trace amounts of other chemicals. Urine is just water with urea, salt, and trace amounts of other chemicals.

If you thoroughly remove these other ingredients it's not really appropriate to call it "recycled urine/sweat" because it no longer contains the chemicals that make it those things. It would be like taking some kool-aid, boiling it, extracting the steam and calling it recycled kool-aid or de-kool-aided-water. It's just water.

And I suspect its cleaner than your average tap water given NASA's propensity to do things very carefully (with a few exceptions) and the taboos associated with drinking urine or sweat.

Re:Bear Grylls

[Hatta]

Bear Grylls fakes his shit. If the camera cut, there's no reason to believe he actually drank his own urine. Drinking your own urine in a survival situation is a bad idea anyway. If you're dehydrated, your urine will be hyperosmotic and do more harm than good.

To be fair though, Bear did eat a live fish on camera, which is one of the coolest things I've seen on TV. Too bad the rest is fake.

Re:How does that make it not "real water"?

[geekoid]

Wow, you are really mistaken. The tastes of the water going into the mix is heavily controlled for taste. Even to the point where some plants have there won water treatment system on top of a cities water treatment system.
So like most people on /, while technically true, not practically an issue.
Save fountain drinks; which really to heavily on the min. wage worker remembering to check the mix.

"You should count yourself lucky if you've ever had two servings of Coca-Cola that tasted the same."
That is just stupid. even if what you said was true to a high degree of practicality, most people drink coke from the same location. It's not like every can in an 8 pack came from a different part of the world.