Comments on: NASA astronauts to drink their own urine today?

The latest NASA mission is trying out a new water recycling device.

[danceswithbuzzards]

Peux-je suggérer une bouteille de notre plus bien millésime - vin yer-own

[plated]

Gee, maybe they will avoid the expense filtering equipment and just drink it from the tap. Could be fun too.
;-)

[blehz]

Chris, it's people with your attitude that keep us wasting billions of gallons of waters a day. We have the technology to be recycling our sewage water here on Earth, which would begin to address the major environmental and human costs of water systems. Unfortunately some people's maturity level on the subject never left high school science class.

[aesman]

You really shouldn't criticize things you don't understand or care to understand.

If you look deeper into "why" this is being done you will understand that it is for the new focus of NASA, long term space travel - to the moon, mars, and beyond. This long term travel requires a lot of water and food for astronaut consumption - load, energy, and money needed to launch this basic need.

The cost effective experiment of finding a way to reduce the load of a launch and the usage of perfectly good water in urine is a lot better than trying to launch ALL the required water for a long term trip and your wallet. All the water needed would require more than one launch.

SO, this is a good experiment for the cost, and load, efficiency of space travel. If you can get past your own ignorance on the subject you might see the importance of this "not so glamorous" experiment.

[thomcarl]

Slow news day? Really stupid article.

[geiste]

wow. how many dumb little kids write for cnet? this is the 2nd "omg gross!" article in as many days. Get over it. Urine, filtered and processed to remove the uriney parts, is no longer urine.

[Ang1942]

Technically Incorrect is just that - incorrect. Most big cities are situated on rivers and upstream are smaller cities, farms, feedlots etc. One guess as to where their sewage is dumped and one guess as to where the larger city has its water intake. The hysteria is just that - hysteria. Our media and bloggers desperately need retraining!

[Soubriquet]

Nothing new about recycling, even monkeys do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IZE-4ZjPVI

[LotsOfBikes]

250 Million dollars is ridiculous.
The Russians have had this Technology for decades.
I?ve used one and it works. It is NOT worth 250 million dollars, and it does not leave an iodine flavor in your mouth.
Why can?t NASA use the Russian version ?
Is it too late for a refund?

[Matt501]

This made the front page of Google News. What is this great urination coming to?

[ratmart]

I drink your milkshake.

[TaverBrin]

Here's a news flash to everyone.... Esp the lame writer who developed the headline!

"DOES EVERYONE BELIEVE THAT THE FISH THAT RESIDE IN OUR DRINKING WATER RESEVOIRS GET OUT OF THE WATER TO PEE AND POO?"

DRINK UP FOLKS... IT'S JUST PART OF LIFE!

[FukingRediculious]

If our astronauts can't handle drinking their own urin, they aren't tough enough to be astronauts.

Get over your selves guys.

(And by the way, 250 million$ is NOTHING! We are wasting 14 billion$ per day in Iraq. The International Space Station of Pancakes cost us a mere 450 billion dollars to build and counting) so get over the price of the pissgizmo NASA's lucky if they can get down to 3 on a count down, let alone save our tax dollars.

You remember the "Deep Impact" program? We gave NASA 200 million $ so they could build a technologically advanced satilite and then intentionally crash it into an asteroid. So to put things in perspective I think NASA has actually done worse.

[LusodoRibatejo]

gellegbs....You lost the sense of reality long time ago.....too lazy and spoiled to know how actually the food chain works....Don't ya know that you eat crap and detergents everyday? handle it like a responsible human being, start growing your own stuff and eat less at the fast food restaurants....seriously...you should take samples of the soil to the lab if you are growing your own stuff, though. you are not the first growing healthy plants in contaminated soil.....

[amg503--2008]

Don't they already do this for those of us that are Earth-bound?

Hmm... Fly to the International Space Station, live there for six months, drink recycled, cleaned waste-water,

or,

Stay here on Earth, roll out of bed every morning, drink recycled, cleaned waste-water? Wonder which one I'd choose.

"Leavin' on a jet plane..."

[victor_sf]

I like that : "one that urine and one day urout..." :-D

[mattumanu]

I know a few people have said this already, but let me say it a little more pointedly.

The "reporters" at news.com need to stop jacking our ***** and acting like Katie Curic eating Chocolate Icecream and drinking lemonade while watching 2girls1cup in a California crackhouse. There's only one thing more disgusting and that's reading a blog entry about who whizzed in whose tang on the international space station and who enjoyed it more. If it bothers you that much then by all means don't visit the international space station and make sure next year to vote for politicians who are competent enough to bring an end to multimillion dollar designer water machines that pump out Urinade in space. I mean, who knows, maybe Nasa wants to bottle astronaut piddle for sale as both an aphrodesiac and a weight loss supplement on late night infomercials on Cspan, whatever floats your boat, just don't report on it to me and then complain you had to report on it.

[Dr_Zinj]

No big deal.

I'd be interested in whether they used a heating system for distillation, or employed a vacuum distillation process (heating requires more energy, they're surrounded in vacuum up there.)

As for a faint taste of iodine, you get that using traditional methods of water purification. Always carried iodine tablets as a boy scout for filling canteens in the feild.

By the way, people imprisoned in camps by the Nazi's before and during WWII sometimes had to drink their own urine, as they were denied adequate water. You can do that for the first pass through without too much adverse effect. More than that and you put too great a strain on your own kidney's.

[mamcgi]

Not a new idea. 1965 Frank Herbert's "Dune Triology" Stillsuits.

[Zanny_Blowzsteve]

And back in the 70's we though TANG! tasted bad.

"It's what the astronaults drank"

Next up... Patches O'Houlihan in space... "Because it's sterile & he likes the taste".