Apparently a bag of urine can be turned into a sugary drink in just a couple of hours, using a syringe attached to the receptacle bag—a method which is cheaper than drawing power from the ship, as current urine filtration systems work.
While there’s no way I would agree to drinking my own or fellow astronauts’ urine, space crew of the future might not have a choice, where every pound of added weight equates to $US10,000 of cost. The water conversion kit is accompanying the Atlantis space crew on a trip this Friday, but instead of using urine this time, they’ve lucked out—for now!—with Nasa supplying them with water bags instead. [Wired via Inhabitat]
NKWONG
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 10:15 PMbear…..grills?
If it's safe then it's good
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 1:34 AMIf people understood the chemistry behind these things, they would understand that if NASA’s filtration system works perfectly, the produced “sport’s drink” would be identical to some of our commercial sports drinks.
The real question is however: Is their system 100% perfect
Nodeity
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:01 AMYep, but NASA isn’t the only ones using this tech, in fact the entire town of “Toowoomba” in the Darling Downs is using recycled sewage water as part of it’s drought mitigation system…. When it was first decided to use it, a bunch of people decided that they would rather live somewhere else… Heh, heh,… Pussies!!
Moondaddy
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 6:40 AMthe future looks bright!
Matt
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:24 AMI for one welcome our future urine drinking overlords..
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:46 AMYeah, we’re all drinking each others’ urine that has been filtered.
Do you pee in a toilet? Do you drink from a tap? There you go.
As ‘If it’s safe then it’s good’ said, think about the chemistry. As long as it’s done 100%, no problem.
It’s just the ‘ick factor’.
huu
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:36 AM+1
They are not drinking urine, Urine contain 95% water, it not that hard to filter it out to get pure water. We all shower and drink recycle water, you dont get headline saying “Would you shower and drink sewage?”
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:54 PMSame kinda people who, upon mention of hemp clothing, rope, whatever, can not RESIST saying ‘can ya smoke it hurr durr’
D
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 9:13 AMwhat flavours does it come in :)
Nodeity
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:27 AMStrong “Last nights Beer” & “Morning WTF did I do last night” .. ;]