Another reason I’m glad I’m a dog person: Fire crews in Queensland are investigating whether a house fire on the Gold Coast was started by a cat peeing on the family laptop.
You know what they say: Nothing takes the callouses off like fastening plastic bags filled with urine around your feet.
So here I am—drinking Martini Rosso with lots of ice, sun licking my cheeks in a NYC terrace—reading that in space they are drinking water recycled from urine for the first time ever. And as you can see, they love it.
Hey, when I throw a party, it’s only the finest for my guests. That means boxed wine and all the cheap beer you can drink served in these elegant Piss Glasses. [Donkey Products via Szymon]
Recently, the International Space Station got a hot new piece of equipment installed: a waste recycler. This fancy machine turns pee into delicious, delicious water. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it working right off the bat. Well, they finally did it. They are a go for pee drinking up there on the ISS.
The multimillion dollar water recycler recently installed by astronauts aboard the International Space Station is still experiencing some minor issues this evening, meaning crew members will just have to wait to have their first peetinis, Long Island Iced Pees, Whiskpee Sours and other lame pee-themed drinks I have yet to think of. The prototype recycler, which separates waste from water using a centrifuge system, was brought to the station aboard the latest shuttle mission. It malfunctioned two hours after installation, although a separate sweat and waste water recycler is working as expected. Phew!
A much-needed second toilet is on its way to the International Space Station, but that’s not all, not nearly. NASA is.gifting the crew with a new waste recycling system, which will be able to reclaim ‘used’ water. In other words, it will process astronauts’ urine and return it to the station’s water supply to, as one of the current inhabitants of the stations cheerily put it, “take yesterday’s coffee and make it into today’s coffee.”
NASA workers at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston received what may be the high point in inter-office email last week requesting they begin to pay regular visits to the good folks of Hamilton Sundstrand, aka the “Wee Wee Contractors.” They’re collecting urine in massive quantities–30 litres per day–as part of their contract to build the toilet for the upcoming Orion lunar spacecraft. But why do they need so much? I’m sure it’s all there in the email…
