ISS Gets New Recycling Gear, Ready For Larger Crew

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.

I always thought...

[Thelasko]

the number of crew members aboard the ISS was limited by the size of the escape vehicle. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Waste hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks fine in IE and Firefox (3) in Windows...

Re:I always thought...

[Ngarrang]

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:Waste hydrogen?

[LunaticTippy]

You could still use it as fuel. Pressurize it using solar power and use it as an unburned positioning jet. If you're throwing it away anyway, you could get some use from it.

Re:Waste hydrogen?

[JesseMcDonald]

The hydrogen could be used as "fuel" (reaction mass) in an ion- or plasma-style engine. No oxygen required, just lots of electricity.

Re:I always thought...

[richdun]

Yes, a second Soyuz is the key for escape (that's why capacity will be 6, instead of the original 7 I think that could fit in the X-38). But they've also been limited by sleeping arrangements, which the new Node 3 will provide, along with having all the labs up and running. While the station might have supported 6 crew members on just the Russian and US sections, things would have been very cramped without the EU and Japanese labs around to help pay for things... er... I mean... give them all things to do.

Re:Waste hydrogen?

[gnick]

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.

Re:Waste hydrogen?

[megaditto]

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.