Urine Passes NASA Taste Test 404
Ponca City, We love you writes "Astronauts flying aboard space shuttle Endeavour are delivering a device to the International Space Station that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far. Among the ship's cargo is a water regeneration system that distills, filters, ionizes, and oxidizes wastewater — including urine — into fresh water for drinking or, as one astronaut puts it, 'will make yesterday's coffee into today's coffee.' The US space agency spent $250M for the water recycling equipment but with the space shuttles due to retire in two years, NASA needed to make sure the station crew would have a good supply of fresh water. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. In space, there's an additional challenge: steam doesn't rise, so the entire distillation system is spun to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine. The water has been thoroughly tested on Earth, including blind taste tests that pitted recycled urine with similarly treated tap water. 'Some people may think it's downright disgusting, but if it's done correctly, you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth,' said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper."
Neat (Score:5, Funny)
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Not many grown ups on this site, obviously.
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The dupes here on Slashdot don't get it that the entire planet is a closed system too. Let them have their Xboxes; when the time comes we'll use them for soylent green. Mmmmm, soylent green...
NO new water on earth - we all drink old urine (Score:4, Insightful)
As the father post pointed out - it's basically a closed system. We've been breathing the same farts, drinking the same urine from the beginning - it's just that it's not so blatant as in the satellite.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Informative)
it's not just this site. the maturity level implied by the summary/article bodes poorly for the human race.
it's called the water cycle [wikipedia.org]. any water you consume, no matter where it's from, has been recycled through natural ecological/biochemical processes. in fact every molecule that makes up your body has been "recycled" in countless ways.
there's nothing gross or unsanitary about recycling the waster from urine through proper distillation. there is absolutely no difference between drinking water distilled from urine and water distilled from rain water or river water. that kind of irrational thinking is the reason why people will spend 10x the money to buy name brand drugs rather than the chemically & pharmacologically identical generics.
you should be more grossed out by keeping your toothbrush within 20 ft of your toilet (as most people seem to do) since studies have shown that fecal bacteria can be sprayed up to 20 ft from the toilet each time the toilet is flushed.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Informative)
I was introduced to the T.P. phenomenon after a Mexican buddy visited my home. I'd been to Mexico many times but I didn't know not to flush because I never took shits there and I was usually so drunk that I never bothered to look in the trash bins. Seeing that ugly brown clump in my wastebasket was enough to ban him from my apartment for a good 2 months before I learned the truth from a few more buddies at home and abroad. Ahh, Western ignorance!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Seeing that ugly brown clump in my wastebasket was enough to ban him from my apartment for a good 2 months before I learned the truth from a few more buddies at home and abroad.
Holy fricken' easter egg surprise batman!... You're very forgiving to only ban him for 2 months.
What's this "truth" you're talking about? Foreigners not following local customs and doing grotesque things, is okay?
When in Rome, do as the Romans do - unless they do it in a basket, then all bets are off.
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People do that because the hydraulic system (is not as good as in the US/etc and) gets clogged if you do that.
For people who are used to it, it's no biggie. Yeah, I know, "excrement ridden", sounds gross, but it's only a matter of taking it, closing the bag and disposing it.
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Talking about unusual contaminants, in my home town we had a particularly disturbing incident a few years ago at our local reservoir. A fisherman drowned. No body turned up. A month later divers found him, stuck in the city water intake
Once the water has been filtered and treated,
Re:Neat (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup. Most computer keyboards have more fecal coliform on them than most toilet seats.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Mythbusters looked at the toothbrush / fecal bacteria thing and found bacteria on a toothbrush kept in the kitchen. That stuff gets everywhere.
That's not from the toilet flushing, that's because you left me alone with your toothbrush for 5 minutes.
I can't help it, when I have an itch, I HAVE to scratch it!
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I used to have sewage reclamation plants in California as one of my clients. They take fresh sewage, separate it, clean it, and turn it back around as drinking water. It happens all the time.
However, the toothbrush myth was debunked on Mythbusters. Toothbrushes kept closer to the toilet did not contain more bacteria. However, they did show that toothbrushes all over the place, even kept outside the bathroom (in the middle of the lab) had bacteria. They pretty much all had the same levels of bacteria.
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You know H and O don't stay inseparably linked for all eternity once they join up as H2O, right?
It's a dynamic, complex chemistry-filled world.
No, I'm New Here (Score:5, Funny)
No, I'm New Here
WHAT 'TASTE' TEST (Score:2)
Did this story pass?
I think I'll 'pass' a little, myself...
Degustibus nil et disputandum.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us can't throw away $250M on something like this, we're forced to drink ours le naturale.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us can't throw away $250M on something like this, we're forced to drink ours le naturale.
Yeah, but here you pay a buck per can and call it "Budweiser".
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Funny you mention that. In a news segment on Canadian TV last year, there was a major deal between breweries being worked on.
So, a few reporters decided to ask local beer drinkers in pubs if the beer of either company was worthwhile. The answer 100% of the time: "I don't drink either - it upsets my stomach. Only imports!"
So maybe this association to the NAStronauts waste recycling program has some truth.
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You mean InBev? [inbev.com]
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
They worked just fine on Dune.
Tell that to the guy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tell that to the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? You should have linked to Dune, [imdb.com] not frigging Waterworld! Now go hand in your geek card.
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Tell that to the guy in this movie
WTF? You should have linked to Dune, [imdb.com] not frigging Waterworld! Now go hand in your geek card.
Blasphemer. You linked to the 1984 Sting version of Dune!?!
Here. Have a nerd's Dune link... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ [imdb.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pfft, heres a real nerdy Dune link... the unfinished 1976 movie version:
http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/dune.html [hotweird.com]
It was supposedly being done by illustrious gentlemen such as Salvador Dali and H.R. Giger, but ran out of money. It also had a rather weird and political take on Dune...
Re:Tell that to Asimov (Score:2)
Yeah, the 'Far Star' had water recycling in the 'Empire' series. I believe the quote to the horrified Pelorat was something like, 'we'd run out of water pretty quick if we didn't.'
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Yes it is. It reminds me of a great put down on some forum. "Since you were born after Star Wars I have no interest in your opinion on this matter, or of anything else"
HOWEVER (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sometimes when I'm thirsty, and REALLY don't want to leave the computer in my Mom's basement - I drink urine.
Re:HOWEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
From your high userid I can identify you as a noob. For future reference, these types of comments are best posted ANONYMOUSLY. God help you if anyone knows your real name. I foresee a future employer doing a google search on your various aliases and THAT comment turning up.
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Dude, UIDs are up to the 1.4M range now. I don't think you can call his "high" when it falls into the bottom 50%.
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I'm in the creamy middle.
I think I've been doing this for at least 10 years... not sure I'm still a newb except to the old and crusty, though :)
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Why tell them? Personally I don't think people should and various idiocy like people getting fired for their facebook photos (eg. the "drunken pirate" schoolteacher) highlight this.
As for the new here remember there were thousands of people looking at this site on day 1, many of which cowered anonymously for ages or later lost passwords (doh!) or both. While you can tell someone with a low id was here for ages it's hard to tell with
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I foresee a future employer doing a google search on your various aliases and THAT comment turning up.
It'd be SOOOO worth it.
Re:HOWEVER (Score:5, Funny)
"Wow, what a dedicated employee! No bathroom breaks, just sitting working endlessly at his computer with at tube from his pants to this mouth."
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In space... (Score:2, Funny)
...no one can hear you steam. Your piss.
Space is a horrible place.
More like "not far enough" (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, funny, astronaut pee. But for crying out loud (and losing valuable water in the process), what is so hard to understand about a closed system?
"Going too far" is spending millions of dollars to send precious DHMO [dhmo.org] to the space station, when there are perfectly good pre-assembled dihydrogen monoxide molecules being blown out into the vacuum.
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what is so hard to understand about a closed system?
1. Getting it to work properly in microgravity.
2. Doing so without taking up very much space or power, as both are in short supply on the ISS.
3. Getting it to work reliably, as it would be decidedly bad for this kind of thing to break down halfway to Mars.
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Joke-----> ~~~~*
Your head-> O
Childish (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bad enough that the mainstream media has been acting like a bunch of prepubescent children over the urine recycling, but now Slashdot has to get into the game as well?
"that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far"
Uh, nope, it doesn't leave me wondering that at all. In fact, when I first read about it I was rather surprised that the ISS wasn't recycling urine already. Any manned moon-base, or long-duration trip to reach Mars, would absolutely require the recycling of urine.
Re:Childish (Score:5, Informative)
People are too far from their food. If people are upset over urine, what would they think of all of the solid waste that ends up as fertilizer?
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Same here.
Isn't it pretty much the safest source of drinking water? You only need something that can handle things that are already in the bodies of the astronauts. We can safely assume none of them have any nasty viruses in them, and I'm pretty sure we don't have bacteria in our own urine, so you're down to getting the sodium and urea out of it I guess.
Re:Childish (Score:5, Informative)
Same here.
Isn't it pretty much the safest source of drinking water? You only need something that can handle things that are already in the bodies of the astronauts. We can safely assume none of them have any nasty viruses in them, and I'm pretty sure we don't have bacteria in our own urine, so you're down to getting the sodium and urea out of it I guess.
This has been debated here in Australia in places where water is very scarce. One issue is with hormones and drugs which get into the urine and can find their way back into the food supply via a recycling system.
Outside inputs to the food chain are heavily regulated on the ISS so I assume this aspect is taken care of.
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This is an interesting comment, but without references it sort of sounds a bit conspiracy theory-esque. Do you have references to back this claim up?
Re:conspiracy theory-esque (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this was pretty damned blatant. Sorry for the lack of supporting linkage. I couldn't remember the system's acronym, and I was feeling a bit lazy.
If you want to impress me (Score:5, Funny)
turn today's brownies into tomorrow's brownies
Re:If you want to impress me (Score:5, Funny)
disgusting? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why is that so disgusting?
Because no mechanical system is completely fail-proof.
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You might want to stop drinking water then ... because these systems are generally BETTER than your local water purifying plant. And THAT water has passed from farm to city ... cow dung in your water anyone?
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It's a lot more disgusting if you live on a very small lot with a leech field and well less than 50 feet from each other.
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That's why I only drink Diet Coke.
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That's why I only drink Diet Coke.
You are obviously too young to have grown up with this politically incorrect child's rhyme [lukechueh.com].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
People really do not have a good intuitive feel for statistics, especially when it comes to number as vastly huge as the n
Recycling too far? Heck no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recycling too far? Heck no (Score:4, Funny)
Try to keep your analysis to something a little more apropriate for a grade 3 class, please. I mean in a story that is about conserving resources, ensuring safety, and pushing humans-in-space technology forward, how are you going to draw attention to your story if you don't pander to bathroom humour and sexual innuendo?
We don't need your kind around here, elitist.
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Seriously, think of all that vacuum available for distillation, and all that cold-side refrigeration, plus the infinite surrounding junkyard, space is the ideal place to purify water.
And if you need more, there's a fair bit circling Saturn you could probably use, with a bit of work.
Taking recycling too far (Score:5, Funny)
closed eco-systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Earth is also a closed ecosystem where we breath in the burnt remains of food ingested by our neighbors, where tap water is derived from the same lakes and streams that animals use as public toilets. Just because the filtration occurs further away and uses some natural bedrock, doesn't make it any different.
Once you have just steam, it can no longer be considered urine, so drinking water is made from condensed steam
I for one plan on no longer partaking in this twisted backwards environment. Long ago I employed the oil companies to convince the ignorant masses to emit large quantities of CO2 - in an elaborate plot to raise global temperatures and melt the pristine icecaps which I will then route into my drinking water. Furthermore, I will destroy this insane ecosystem that exists in this evil urine drinking manner. You may wonder why I am willing to so freely say this, but what can you do about it? What can you do! mu-hahaha.
anyone know what we were talking about?
Had a glass of water at Lake Tahoe CA? (Score:5, Informative)
The waste water treatment industry has 3 levels of treatment here on Earth. Primary was what was done in the 60's and before (if any treatment). Solids were ground and held to allow bacteria to digest it (the septic tank method) and it was dumped in the river to dilute it for downstream, with a shot of Chlorine. Then secondary treatment came online in the 70's and later, which is what most municipalities do today, where the solids are filtered out by vacuum or pressure filters and burned or buried, but you'd still be able to tell that the chlorine treated effluent was far from potable.
Finally there is tertiary treatment, which yields water so pure you could drink it (disgusting as it might seem), and this is what is implemented at locations such as Lake Tahoe CA. The water flowing out of the waste water treatment is cleaner than that in the lake itself, after the calcium filtration, etc. There are also de-nitrogenation and de-phosphoration processes to "scrub" the effluent of excess Nitrogen and Phosphorus.
How did you think the Mission to Mars was going to supply water to the crew? Certainly could not tanker enough fresh water to make the multi-year trip to Mars AND BACK.
Tang 2.0? (Score:2)
New and improved Tang better than prior Tang
Another innovation spin off from the space program.
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad for you that Tang [wikipedia.org] predates NASA [wikipedia.org], much less being a spin-off.
blind taste tests? (Score:5, Funny)
All water used to be pee (Score:2, Informative)
Already featured in Crichton's "Congo" (1980) (Score:5, Interesting)
"This is our advanced technology unit" she said, lifting up a small backpack. "We've developed a miniaturized package for field parties; twenty pounds of equipment contains everything a man needs for two weeks:food, water, clothing, everything."
"Even water?" Elliot asked. Water was heavy: seven-tenths of human body weight was water, and most of the weight of food was water; that was why dehydrated food was so light.
But water was far more critical to human life than food. Men could survive for weeks without food, but they would die in a matter of hours without water. And water was heavy.
Ross smiled. "The average man consumes four to six liters a day, which is eight to thirteen pounds of weight. On a two-week expedition to a desert region, we'd have to provide two hundred pounds of water for each man. But we have a NASA water-recycling unit which purifies all excretions, including urine. It weighs six ounces. That's how we do it."
Seeing his expression, she said: "It's not bad at all. Our purified water is cleaner than what you get from the tap."
"I'll take your word for it."
Re: (Score:2)
Who did the alpha testing? (Score:2)
Think about it. I'm sure they had to try a bunch of times to get it to pass the taste test. Who volunteered to test it? How much were they paid?
They couldn't hire winos since you could give them pure, unpurified urine and they'd say it was an excellent vintage.
A very necessary step (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're to survive as a species, in the long run, we have to get off this rock. Permanently. And unless we perfect some form of cryo-sleep or faster than light travel (possibly even if we DO perfect those), we're going to need some means of recycling our own waste products into usable substances.
I've been in situations where the only water available for drinking also happened to be the local wild animals' mudhole. Animal urine and fecal matter were most certainly present, but there was no other water for miles in any direction. So it was scooped up, run through a rag to skim off any solids, run through an activated charcoal filter to purify it, pumped full of iodine to kill any microbes that might have survived the charcoal filtration, then turned into koolaid to mask the taste. Survival situations will do wonders for changing what you are and are not willing to drink. I was fortunate that I had all that equipment for purification. Those living in third world nations don't have the option of stocking up at the local REI.
And I imagine space travelers heading for outer worlds, asteroid belts, or other star systems will have their options pretty limited as well :)
On the other hand... (Score:2)
They should have included Zima and Baby Duck. The astronauts would have been begging for unprocessed urine as an alternative.
Time saved. Money saved. Mars, here we come!
in Soviet Russia..... (Score:2, Funny)
well, you drink it as urine.
As others have said, you are already doing it (Score:2)
Contrary to what some of you might think when you drink tap water there is a very high likely hood it's been processed from the wastewater of others.
Unless you live at the top of water supply chain (the literal top of the mountain) another city used your water source and discharged it's sewage back into it before you got it. To put it bluntly, everyone is downstream and you are drinking the wastewater of the cities upstream from you.
Just because it flowed in a river or seeped into the ground and was pumped
Re: (Score:2)
Stilsuit (Score:2)
They recycle body waste on Arrakis too...
Liet-Kynes: Urine and Feces are processed in the thigh-pads.
what kind of idiot thinks this is a big deal?? (Score:2)
Vapours! (Score:2)
Hopefully they take supplements (Score:2)
Naturally occurring water here on earth has dissolved minerals and other trace elements that are critical for our health. It is not advisable for people to drink only distilled water over any long term, without taking other precautions.
I suspect NASA has taken this into account, and do add additives to the water (iodine is mentioned for added sterility) but just FYI for wannabe distilled-piss drinkers out there.
Too far? Pfft. (Score:2)
A quick google didn't turn up an authoritative source... However, Jerry Pournelle makes the claim that in the '70s the cleanest running stream in California was the output of the hyperion wastewater treatment plant. Which wasn't saying that the natural streams were necessarily horrible, but they do have natural pollutants (the bears gotta crap somewhere, right?), so the treated water is cleanest. Always sounded quite logical to me.
Malfunctions not withstanding, of course.
Associative bias and perception... (Score:2)
... I always laugh at people who think "ewww yuck" at recycled water, if they knew the kinds of waste products from all the other organisms that exist in their drinking water, the lakes they swim in, etc, they would be just as disgusted. We already do technically eat the waste products of other animals and ourselves and have been doing so since forever, the fact that people are so distanced from nature I think add's a lot of distortion to their perception. Since once you become divorced from the cycles of
Earth Urine-Water System (Score:2)
It's new?? (Score:2)
Iodine (Score:3, Informative)
Do you really think... (Score:3, Interesting)
... that the air you breathe or the water you drink or the food you eat hasn't already been through at least one set of lungs or digestive tract? The Last Breath of Caesar" [cuhk.edu.hk] calculation shows that every breath each of us takes likely contains 1 molecule of Caesar's Last Breath.
Similarly, every glass of water you drink has an average of 3.6x10^12 or 3.6 million million molecules of Titanic Water [www.zyra.tv] (water from the iceberg that sunk the Titanic).
From that link:
Their disclaimer is funny, too: "Special disclaimer: We do not advocate or condone the use of ICE in whisky, and it is merely used here for illustrative purposes. We also do not condone the sinking of ships, and acknowledge that the iceberg was not entirely to blame for the sinking of the Titanic."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And for this bright idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Gee whiz, that was a bad joke.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I agree. It was in bad taste.
Re:And for this bright idea... (Score:5, Informative)
No, they paid two hundred and fifty million dollars to get it to work. In space. Without taking up to much space or energy in the space station. (Where both are at a premium.)
And this is essential technology if we are ever going to leave the Earth-Moon system. Shipping enough water for a manned trip to even the nearest planet is simply prohibitive, in weight, volume, and cost. So long-term it's a good investment. (If you think we should invest in space at all, of course...)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Which was stupid. The book clearly states the Fremen wearing light robes over the stillsuit, for better camouflage, and, yes, keeping cool.
Worse... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yeah, well (Score:4, Funny)
How do you know it wasn't actually Budweiser?
Re:Yeah, well (Score:5, Funny)
How do you know it wasn't actually Budweiser?
Because he only puked for an hour!
Re:Woo! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the home version is a few miles down the road, typically.
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It's not a filter, it's distilling. It's a heck of a lot purer than just filtration, which is why it's BETTER quality water than you get in your tap. Apart from the missing minerals of course. I imagine any long-term trip into space would need to take mineral supplements to add to the water.
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations! Hopefully, you have just ensured no Slashdot reader will ever buy from your site.
We need a mod level lower than -1, I am sick of spam postings here.
Could we not make a filter so when a long post, such as the usual obama one that seems to get dredged up all the time lately, simply do not get posted after the same post occours more than three times in a day?
I am all for freedom of speech, but this is simply repeat trolling of the same stuff.