Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Mahnmut wrote:CAPE CANAVERAL — A textbook-sized kit that can convert urine into drinkable water will accompany NASA's last space shuttle mission this Friday.

Soldiers already use similar technology to filter out parasites, bacteria, viruses and other contaminants from dirty fluids, including urine, but NASA's adapted baggie system has yet to prove itself in space.

"This could be a first step toward recapturing the humidity from our sweat, from our breath, even from our urine, and recycling it and making it drinkable," said NASA project scientist and experiment leader Howard Levine, who made a reference to water-recycling "stillsuits" used on a desert world in the science fiction series Dune.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station already drink water from a pee-recycling machine delivered several years ago, but it saps power from the orbital laboratory's limited supply. The space-ready water conversion kit, however, won't need an external power source because it relies on a passive property of fluids called forward osmosis.

NASA's recycler will use a sugary solution injected into a semi-permeable inner bag, which is nested inside an outer bag. Dirty fluid that's pumped into the outer bag will slowly pass through the inner bag and into the sugary solution, leaving behind its contaminants. On Earth, the double-sack system makes about a liter of sports drink-like fluid in four to six hours.

One of the four astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis will test the recycler — with an experimental fluid, not their own urine — toward the end of their 12-day mission, scheduled for launch this Friday at 11:26 a.m. EDT.

Source

D Pope wrote:Sorry guys, I can't resist...
Do you think they'll all be floating around waiting to see his expression when he takes that first sip?
Who could resist uttering that one word;
"Well?"

D Pope wrote:I was thinking that was the reason for the sports drink like suger they've added. Oh, & yeah, not a lot of confidence in the outcome- waiting for the end of the mission to try it.

Sorry guys, I can't resist...
Do you think they'll all be floating around waiting to see his expression when he takes that first sip?
Who could resist uttering that one word;
"Well?"

trang wrote:Cool find, waytogo Eyes. Hope it works out, be handy item.

Sad thing is the just fired the last mission for the only space vehicle whe have to get to the space station, or anywhere for that matter. No new space trucks for Nasa, no new space people carriers at all as far as I can see. Last I heard they are going backwards to a pod system like the old missions on a rocket.

When commercial LEO planes have made trips already, and more advanced and HEO planes are on the way. Why cant we make one too?

Shooting payloads into space on the top of rockets is fine, been doing that for years, and it works.

DuneFishUK wrote:The first sip is one thing.

Passing it around for the rest of the crew to try is another.

ULFsurfer wrote:

trang wrote:Cool find, waytogo Eyes. Hope it works out, be handy item.

Sad thing is the just fired the last mission for the only space vehicle whe have to get to the space station, or anywhere for that matter. No new space trucks for Nasa, no new space people carriers at all as far as I can see. Last I heard they are going backwards to a pod system like the old missions on a rocket.

When commercial LEO planes have made trips already, and more advanced and HEO planes are on the way. Why cant we make one too?

Shooting payloads into space on the top of rockets is fine, been doing that for years, and it works.

The idea is that NASA lets commercial industry take over completely in terms of launching payloads and astronauts into orbit. This enables governmental money instead to be spent on developing deep space vehicles and later sending missions. But it's pretty gambly and naive to believe that the companies will be successful in the near future..