ISS Gets New Recycling Gear, Ready For Larger Crew 158
TnGoastiiaiu submitted a space.com story that expands on coverage we've had earlier about improvements being made to the ISS to increase crew capacity. He writes "ISS gets new recycling gear that transforms human waste to drinking water. Some of the water will be used to get Oxygene, too. This way it will soon be possible to host more crew members. " Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Waste hydrogen? (Score:3, Funny)
Looks just fine in Safari and Firefox, both on OS X... Sounds like someone needs to check their settings/browser choice before setting off to "smack" anyone. :)
As for trasforming human waste (just urine, according TFA) into drinking water, well, I'm just mighty glad I didn't choose to become an astronaut. I did wonder about this part, though:
Waste hydrogen? I would have expected them to have some use for that.
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I'm not sure they have no use for waste hydrogen. Still, it may be that actually processing that hydrogen is (at the moment) prohibitive.
We're looking here at having a stable installation, designed for imponderability, that's easily operated, lightweight, is shock-resistant, doesn't take much space and a bunch of other things.
If they start using the technology, I'm sure they'll come up with something efficient for the extra hydrogen though ...
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Generally, that hydrogen will require oxygen(e) to be useful, and they're splitting the oxygen off for other uses already.
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Generally, that hydrogen will require oxygen(e) to be useful, and they're splitting the oxygen off for other uses already.
Exactly - To use hydrogen, you typically either compress it or burn it. Compressing it is a lot of trouble and burning it is the exact opposite of extracting breathable oxygene* (a major goal).
* Oxygene - Just like regular oxygen, but now with more electrolytes!
Oxygene! (Score:2)
Landmark electronic music album by Jean Michel Jarre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyg%C3%A8ne [wikipedia.org]
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I hear those work great on Dune....
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I believe that Still Suits were the original goal. Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.
Also, there are already a few posts (including FP) that include some "Eww, yuck" content. Pretty much all of us are drinking reprocessed pee to some degree. NASA's just getting efficient about it. Accept it - It's OK. Everything used to be something else. Even you.
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Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.
Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property [imdb.com] as well?
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Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.
Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property [imdb.com] as well?
I wish you hadn't brought that up - It wouldn't have been an issue.
There are a lot of people who have read Dune (or at least watched the mini-series [imdb.com] or had the movie [imdb.com] seared into their brains). But not even Costner sat through Waterworld - Since even the stage-hands and producers had blocked that movie out of their memories, nobody would have ever sued over the reprocessed pee scene.
Thanks a lot for cluing them in...
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Thanks a lot for cluing them in...
Actually, t'were Dana Carvey who first mentioned it... while channeling Ross Perot:
"You can't pee into a coffee filter and get Folgers crytals. It just doesn't work that way."
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Stillsuits have never struck me as the most brilliant of ideas. Sweating is how the body gets rid of heat, if you want to recycle the sweat then you need to get rid of the heat in some other way.
But if you have another way to get rid of heat it is probablly simpler just to keep the body cool enough that it doesn't sweat much.
Once you do that then it will mainly be breath and pee that you have to worry about.
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Stillsuits have never struck me as the most brilliant of ideas. Sweating is how the body gets rid of heat, if you want to recycle the sweat then you need to get rid of the heat in some other way.
As a God Emperor I have some authority on this issue here.
The stillsuits don't stop you from sweating. You still sweat when you get hot, but the sweat is then absorbed by the stillsuit and reprocessed into drinking water.
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sure, which means the sweat does not evaporate into the atnosphere which means it doesn't serve it's purpose which is keeping the body cool.
So you are going to need another system to keep the body cool.
Once you have such a system it seems stupid to me not to just keep the body cool enough that it does not sweat significantly.
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Did I say absorbed? I didn't quite mean absorbed directly. It still evaporates. Whether it evaporates into the atmosphere or not doesn't matter so much. The evaporation process still cools the body.
Liet-Kynes:
The skin-contact layer's porous. Perspiration passes through it, having cooled the body ... near-normal evaporation process.
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Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
Waste hydrogen? I would have expected them to have some use for that.
The obvious thing to do with hydrogen is to use it as fuel. But think about it: burning it would undo the electrolysis by consuming all the oxygen generated, so unless they are looking for a way to convert electricity into a chemical fuel, it isn't very useful...
if oxygen is scarcer than energy, burning stuff isn't a sensible thing to do
Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The hydrogen could be used as "fuel" (reaction mass) in an ion- or plasma-style engine. No oxygen required, just lots of electricity.
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We haven't even got fusion to work (in the sense of actually generating power rather than being a load on the power grid) down here on earth yet. Let alone up in space.
Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Looks fine in IE and Firefox (3) in Windows...
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Re browsers: Just checked it (using XP) on I.E.7, Firefox, Safari and Opera and it rendered OK.
Guess someone's browser is not set right. You're not using something awful like I.E 5 or 6 are you? NOTHING works on them.
Try here [savethedevelopers.com] for something better.
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Akshully, it looks fine in IE6 on XP pro. (I'm at work, I don't have a choice!!!!)
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Akshully...
--
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
I think that your spell-checker is making fun of you by granting you that sig but missing Akshully != Actually. ;-)
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He's probably running NoScript. You have to allow scripts from space.com for it to show up properly.
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Konqueror also renders it fine. (KDE 3.5.9) [imageshack.us]
Re:Waste hydrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's enormously ironic that CmdrTaco can criticize anyone for website design.
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@charset "UTF-8";
Name: user2.css
Version: 1.01
Author: me
Description: a css for tired li'l eyes...
*/
* {
background: Black !important;
color: #BF5FFF !important;
}
input, textarea, select {
background: Black !important;
color: #912CEE !important;
}
button, input[type="file"], input[type="submit"], input[type="b
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Jeez, they may do that with your drinking water right now.
The process is excellent. treated urine is perfectly safe to drink, and you can't tell it from any other water becasue after the treatment it IS water.
I agree with the hydrogen statement. Seems like they could be testing fuel cells, or hydrogen generators.
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It depends how they treat it. For instance, most filters and some ion exchange membranes out there cannot remove small virus particles from solutions.
I for one wouldn't enjoy the thought of drinking a glass of someone's HIV, herpes, or cancer viruses, even though they would probably be harmless at that point.
I am not even going to mention all the homeopathy, alternative medicine, and other considerations that might come into play if they turn out to be true.
Down the road for the H2. (Score:2)
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As for trasforming human waste (just urine, according TFA) into drinking water, well, I'm just mighty glad I didn't choose to become an astronaut.
Yes, we're lucky that kind of thing doesn't happen down here in nature. We wouldn't want to drink those yucky tainted atoms.
The real question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Are they bringing any freeze-dried potatoe?
Re:The real question is... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about that, but they will get hydrogene as a byproduct.
Yummie! (Score:5, Funny)
* ???
* Profit!
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* Transform human waste to drinking water * ??? * Profit!
So that's why the Gnomes were collecting underpants!
Re:Yummie! (Score:5, Funny)
* Collect spice
* Profit!
Water into code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Water into code? (Score:5, Funny)
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Friends don't let friends code drunk.
Re:Water into code? (Score:5, Funny)
Or do mathematics.
Remember, math and alcohol don't mix. Please don't drink and derive.
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What if they have to maintain someone else's Perl?
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What if they have to maintain someone else's Perl?
Friends don't let friends code Perl, either.
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Astonishing. The Turbo Pascal/Delphi meme just won't die, despite one commercial failure after another.
I can understand that. I worked at Borland for 3 years, documenting the Delphi APIs, before the dysfunctional corporate culture drove me away. It really is a simpler, more powerful approach to procedural/object programming. Now I can't stand to go near it — too depressing.
Oxygene (Score:1)
What's Oxygene?
Re:Oxygene (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oxygene (Score:5, Funny)
What's Oxygene?
It is one of the two types of Atomes that make up Watere. The other is Hydrogene.
If you have any other questions about Chemistrye, I'll be happy to answer them for you!
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Look, ytte is written in Olde. It must bee fromm befor they invented Fpelling.
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Designer label oxygen. Only the best for the astronauts.
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No, you're thinking about iXygen.
Oxygene (Score:5, Funny)
Jean-Michel Jarre songs are made of water? Who knew?
I always thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
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the number of crew members aboard the ISS was limited by the size of the escape vehicle. [wikipedia.org]
As did I. To wit, I figured they could just attached a second escape vehicle? But, aside from having to escape, the current system is limited in how much waste it can process, so limiting the number of active crew.
Re:I always thought... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I always thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
And of course (Score:2)
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Re:crew limitation (Score:2)
Webmaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't webmasters die along with the 90's?
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I used to use the Read Easily [mozilla.org] Firefox extension, that adds a toolbar button and a hotkey (Ctrl-Z) to toggle styles on and off. Perfect for tiny fonts, bad colors, etc.
Now, Vimperator [mozdev.org] rendered many smaller extensions obsolete, I mapped the \ key to do it, with :map \ :invnum<CR>
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't webmasters die along with the 90's?
Crappy jobs never die, they're only given fancier titles. I figure about now it's called "Chief 3xW Presence Officer" or something like that. Certainly noone else understands what he's talking about without a translator...
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Who out of this group is the proverbial "webmaster"?
Jean Michel Jarre (Score:1)
Some of the water will be used to get Oxygene, too
Anything which extends the reach of this classic tune is good in my books, although how they're going to accomplish it with plain old H2O is curious.
Oxygene? (Score:1, Funny)
Jean Michel Jarre will be most pleased!
Matrix in space! (Score:2)
Yuk! (Score:2)
Drinking re-cycled urine...are they taking the piss?
Re:Yuk! (Score:5, Insightful)
All the water on Earth is essentially recycled urine at this point.
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All the water on Earth is essentially recycled urine at this point.
Oh shit!
Re:Yuk! (Score:5, Funny)
That too.
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I didn't think that many people peed in the pool or ocean.
People?!
"background texture behind the text" (Score:2)
It looks fine to me. I use Iceweasel 3.0 (Debianized rebranded version of Firefox 3.0 and current Iceweasel version in Lenny).
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I'm guessing the person who actually needs to be smacked is taco for using some weird browser that doesn't render the page like any of the mainstream browsers...
background texture behind the text (Score:2)
Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Either they've fixed it already, or it works fine in Firefox 3 and IE 7, for me.
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Building cross platform web sites is (Score:1)
Drink recycled water (Score:2)
Drink recycled water. It's good for the environment, and okay for you. ;)
heh.
Seriously though I'll keep trusting the natural rain cycle or distillation myself, not a filtering process.
could be too little electric power (Score:2)
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!! (Score:2)
In space (Score:2)
Well it's definitely not an excuse (Score:2)
The site does work in IE but not Firefox -- piss-poor webmastership either way.
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Here ya go:
Necessary? It's not necessary that I drink my own urine, but it's sterile and I like how it tastes.
Re:Oxygene? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for being the first person to notice this and post about it.
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The way I first read the headline was much more appealing:
"ISS gets new recycling gear, ready for lager"
mentifex... is that you?? (Score:2)
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here, please do Usenet. (...)
I think that's why i stopped doing usenet...