Purified urine to be astronauts' drinking water

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – As NASA prepares to double the number of astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, nothing may do more for crew bonding than a machine being launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday.

It's a water-recycling device that will process the crew's urine for communal consumption.

"We did blind taste tests of the water," said NASA's Bob Bagdigian, the system's lead engineer. "Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."

"I've got some in my fridge," he added. "It tastes fine to me."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081114/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_space_shuttle

[Warpy]

1. Urea is a big enough molecule to filter pretty easily

I hope they're using an osmotic system, though, since minerals and drug metabolites are a whole lot more difficult to trap.

Water's water, and we're all drinking stuff that was peed out by something or someone centuries ago.

[onehandle]

3. Ugh. Don't remind me.

My coffee may have been made with Karl Rove's pee.

Ugh!

[GliderGuider]

74. I've heard that during older Native American shamanic rituals

The shamans would take peyote. Other tribe members that weren't allowed into the ritual lodge would wait by the doorway. When the shaman came out during the night to pee, they would collect his urine, filter it through a basket of earth and drink it. The urea would be partially filtered out by the earth, but the active peyote metabolites would make it through, and the others could get a second-hand high.

Thus endeth today's lesson in cultural anthropology.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Sounds like

a Fremen stillsuit from Dune. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stillsuit#Stillsuit

[cobalt1999]

4. Who knows where your water molecules have been.

Probably a good bit of the water molecules from the average tap were part of urine at one point.

[GodlessBiker]

5. Kinky. I like it.

[dipsydoodle]

6. I'm trying to figure

why anyone would know what iodine tastes like. :shrug:

[ChickMagic]

12. If you ever get a nuclear scan

you get shot up with radioactive iodine. You can taste it while it makes it's way through your system. It pretty much tastes like it smells.

[dipsydoodle]

19. Thanks

hadn't thought of that. My wife had something similar while they were testing for her brain tumour and she could see it visually - rainbows come a Pink Floyd show.

[TygrBright]

14. There's a strong link between the sense of taste and the sense of smell.

In many cases, we identify a taste based on a smell. Effectively, they're saying that the taste excites some of the same sensory reactions as getting a faint whiff of iodine.

Not unpleasant but not neutral, either.

Most water "tastes" of something, even if it's just the ambient air contacting its surface. We just don't have taste receptors sensitive and/or discriminatory enough to make us conscious of what we're "tasting."

helpfully,
Bright

[dipsydoodle]

17. Did you know that there people

who can taste colour too. I think Kandinsky was one of them.
In general : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[snooper2]

57. That's just fucking stupid...

and although you "wiki" link has psudo science in it...it even state's this..

Although Cytowic suggested that synesthetic experiences are necessarily spatially extended, more recent research has shown many cases where this is not true. For example, some synesthetes "know" the color of their letters or the taste of their words, but do not experience them as a color in space or a taste on the tongue (see below).


:rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

66. Not its not.

There are people who can see sound as coloured light. At birth all of your senses are connected - with some people there is then incomplete separation.

[GliderGuider]

73. LSD gives many people synesthesia as well.

The taste of purple or hunter green -- yum

[BadgerKid]

21. You can buy iodine tablets

for water purification. Good for when you run out of water while camping or hiking, etc.

[dipsydoodle]

28. Do not get those anywhere near

ammonia. :rofl:

[BumRushDaShow]

41. Had a chem professor tell his story about doing just that

when he and one of his buddies were in college. :rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

46. We were playing with at school

when we were only 14 years old - mind you were all very good at chemistry. Best we managed was to split a cast iron manhole cover one lunchtime at school.

Just splattered across a floor when it was wet to form droplets made it really exciting for the school cleaners. :rofl:

[daleo]

62. I have used it on short backpacking trips to purify water

It's not recommended for longer trips, but it is a lot lighter than filters, etc.

[jmowreader]

64. Campers use iodine tablets to purify water

[struggle4progress]

70. Iodine tablets have been used for decades for raw water purification

It's a common camping supply

http://www.deltagear.us.nyud.net:8090/Hydration/Tablets/IodineTablets.jpg

<edit:> Obviously I should have read the thread before posting

[olddad56]

7. I'm afraid to ask what they are eating.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. Brownies.

From what I hear.

[KittyWampus]

10. LOL!

[T Wolf]

8. Like Kevin Costner in Waterworld? Should be possible/easy. nt

[Truth Teller]

13. Someone really watched that movie?

:)

[T Wolf]

34. Hey - I like apocalyptic, end-of-the-world films. Even bad ones. Part of it is the don't-mess-with

Mother-Nature theme.

[Posteritatis]

56. I'd just managed to forget that I had. :( nt

[tabasco]

11. A lot of people are drinking purified river water for tap water.

Dead bodies and stuff in there.

[pipi_k]

26. Before we had a well dug...

we were getting our water from a spring that ran into a covered spring house and through a line about 200 feet downhill into the house.

It always tasted fine to me...better than city water

About twice a year, Mr Pip had to go up and "muck out the spring house" because sediment would collect on the bottom of it...we always assumed the water on top was clean and clear

that was before there was a stoppage and we had to blow the lines out from the house up to the spring house.

We did it and voila....there was the problem...

a dead frog came shooting out the other end. How he got by the screen we'll never know

It actually never occurred to me that the spring itself was probably being tramped through and licked up by various forest animals as it flowed across the ground into the spring house.





So we had the well dug. For some reason, the water just doesn't taste as good as it used to, though... go figure.... :shrug:

[Truth Teller]

15. This is really screwing up the dreams of a lot of little boys

:)

[gabby garcia]

82. what about the little girls???

:grr:
gg

[Traveling_Home]

16. Ghandi drank his urine - believe to help purify soul nt

[struggle4progress]

71. You're confusing Gandhi with Morarji Desai

[struggle4progress]

75. ... "In 1978 Dan Rather, on CBS's 60 Minutes, interviewed Desai, who spoke at length about the great

value of drinking urine. Newsweek reported (August 21, 1995) that Mohandas Gandhi was a urine drinker, but this was later denied by India's Gandhi Institute." UPDATE: I turned to one of the foremost experts on Gandhi, Prof. Dennis Dalton of Barnard College. His response: "Sushila Nayyar, Gandhi's personal physician, told me that Gandhi did not believe in this practice, though Moraji definitely did. There is no reference in Gandhi's works to it. Arun Gandhi at the Gandhi Institute denied it and Arun is a sound authority on Gandhi" ... http://www.sajaforum.org/gandhi/

[AllentownJake]

18. Sounds better than Dassani

[sandrakae]

20. why dont they just take up cases of bottled spring water. This is making me gag.

[Delphinus]

32. Yeah,

there's something about this that I just can't quite wrap my brain around. I know people do urine therapy, I understand that it can be filtered, but there's something about it that just seems "gross".

[NickB79]

48. Because every extra pound of cargo lifted into orbit costs thousands of dollars. NT

[Solon]

58. Where the hell do you think bottled spring water comes from, don't fish and other animals piss...

in it?

Urine is composed of 99% water, filter out the other stuff, and it is just H2O and is actually purer than the stuff you get out of your tap and bottled water.

[Posteritatis]

63. And here's the dumbest suggestion of the day about this sort of thing (nt)

[sandrakae]

77. It isn't any dumber then drinking urine.

[Posteritatis]

79. Sure it is, considering that they're drinking purified water

But yeah, if you want to add millions upon millions of dollars to launch expenses because you insist on a purely kneejerk reaction to something that already happens as a matter of course in major cities anyway (and anywhere that gets water from rivers or lakes) with far, far less QC, go right ahead.

[Random_Australian]

78. Because of the weight. But why gag about recycled water?

You drink water that has been recycled and filtered, you know. You don't get water from some magical pristine source that has never been through an animal, you know.

[HopeHoops]

22. Sounds better than Miller Lite - that isn't even purified.

[customerserviceguy]

51. Reminds me of the guy

who wanted to make his own beer, so he sent some Miller Lite to a respected university lab for analysis to see what was in it.

Three weeks later, he got a letter saying, "Sir, we regret to inform you that your horse has diabetes..."

[aquart]

23. Another reason I will never be an astronaut.

[AndyTiedye]

43. I'd Drink Recycled Pee if That's What You Have to Do to Go Into Space

It's probably better than most municipal water anyway.

[aquart]

50. Well, it'swhat they drink in San Diego.

We used to drink regular water in New York, but not anymore. They also don't rate our water as Number One anymore, either.

[liberal N proud]

24. That settles it

I will NOT ever go into space.


Not that that was a decision that I was ever going to have to make.

[Abacus]

25. Hm, I assumed they already did this

[TankLV]

36. Me too - LONG ago when the program first started.

[Parche]

27. The Constellation Urine

:woohoo: :hi:

[jb5150]

29. Maybe it's an acquired taste

..... :spray:

[NashVegas]

30. The Spice Must Flow!

And we're sending them out to find it.

[PassingFair]

45. Already got one on THESE in my closet!

[NashVegas]

47. Whoa

Dare I ask where that came from?

[PassingFair]

54. It's not really in my closet...

:blush:

But you can buy stuff from here:

www.arrakis.co.uk/colpage14.html

[4lbs]

31. The water we drink today has already been drunk and urinated thousands of times before by our

ancestors and animals.

[bean fidhleir]

80. Exactly. I wonder where people THINK their drinking water comes from.

They must imagine that it's invented fresh for them, or imported from outer space or something.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Wizard777]

35. There are just some things I don't need to know. This is one of them.

[HopeHoops]

37. Did you know that most dust mites have over ten thousand barbed hair-like things on their bodies?

[OnyxCollie]

38. They'll probably want a big can of this.

[boobooday]

39. Astronaut pee is the best pee of all. Cosmically refreshing!

:rofl:

[customerserviceguy]

52. Depends.

Oh, sorry, that's just the container!

[Wilber_Stool]

40. ?

The soldier in white was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms. He had been smuggled into the ward during the night, and the men had no idea he was among them until they awoke in the morning and saw the two strange legs hoisted from the hips, the two strange arms anchored up perpendicularly, all four limbs pinioned strangely in air by lead weights suspended darkly above him that never moved. Sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding his elbow was empty, and the two were simply switched quickly so that the stuff could drip back into him. All they ever really saw of the soldier in white was a frayed black hole over his mouth.

Catch-22

[Xithras]

42. Meh. Most of Los Angeles does the same thing.

In Northern California, most of the Central Valley cities (millions of people) flush their toilets into treatment plants that ultimately dump into the rivers. Throughout the Rockies, millions more in other cities flush waste into plants that dump into the Colorado and its tributaries. Both river systems are tapped near their ends and the pumped water is sent to the Los Angeles basin for drinking.

If the water is filtered correctly, it shouldn't matter much.

[ShortnFiery]

44. I'd piss-off that idea.

:P :silly:

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

49. That's an old concept.

Nothing new or amazing about it. It's simply practical.

[surrealAmerican]

53. I thought they'd been doing this for years.

It's surprising that this is the first time they've considered it.

[cosmicone]

55. up next ...... golden showers ..... n/t

[Blue_Tires]

59. so are the food paks freeze-dried soylent green?

[jmowreader]

65. Soylent Green requires no freeze-drying. It's shelf-stable naturally.

[Smarmie Doofus]

60. Thanks for sharing. nt

[zelta gaisma]

61. ok having a mental EWWW! and a better them than me . moment here

[unkachuck]

67. yummy....does that fresh glass of water come with a foaming head?....n/t

[nolabels]

68. So you want to be an astronaut you say?

:rofl:

[truthisfreedom]

69. Uhh... anybody remember Dune?

Their suits recycled EVERYTHING.

[struggle4progress]

72. Transforming Urine into Water: Astronauts to Install New Space Station Water System

http://www.physorg.com.nyud.net:8090/newman/gfx/news/hires/nasa_water_treatment_system.jpg

... The Water Recovery System, made possible in part by researchers at Michigan Technological University, can transform ordinary pee into water so pure it rivals the cleanest on Earth.

David Hand was the lead researcher on the project, which ran from 1993 to 1997 at Tech. It was a memorable time. "We received jars of sweat from NASA," he said. "Then we did experiments on the system, measured it at every step, evaluated it and made recommendations."

Under the new system, urine undergoes an initial distillation process and then joins the rest of the recovered fluids in the water processor. The processor filters out solids such as hair and lint and then sends the wastewater through a series of multifiltration beds, in which contaminants are removed through adsorption and ion exchange.

"What's left over in the water are a few non adsorbing organics and solvents, like nail polish remover, and they go into a reactor that breaks them all down to carbon dioxide, water and a few ions," said Hand, a professor of civil and environmental engineering ... http://www.physorg.com/news145941700.html

[Dukkha]

76. "My God, It's full of pee!"

[Vidar]

81. Just like the "still suits" from Frank Herbert's "Dune". Very cool!

[RedCloud]

83. I'm getting pissed about this!

NM