NASA Austronauts will drink recycled urine from a common pool.
*quote " Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."
“I’ve got some in my fridge,” he added. “It tastes fine to me.”*
Fine with me…what’s the question?
Technically, at this point I believe pretty much all water on the planet is recycled urine.
Also, every breath you inhale contains about a million molecules of William Howard Taft’s flatulence.
The sensationalist title is misfortunate, since they are drinking reclaimed water, not “urine”. It’s always been a given that any long-term human habitation in space is going to require recycling, and water is the most obvious place to start.
As an ex-sailor, I can say with confidence that I used to drink whale and dolphin piss. Properly purified, of course.
Sperm, Seaman?
My father used to say that every drop of water you drink contains urine from Jesus. I don’t know why he didn’t say Moses, since he was Jewish.
They’ve been recycling urine for a long time on spacecraft, haven’t they?
I guess I’d just assumed that. I’m a bit surprised that they haven’t been “drinking urine” for years now.
I don’t know if they still just dump it, but I remembered this from the Apollo days, and went looking for it:
Both Apollo and the Shuttle used hydrogen fuel cells for electricity, with drinkable water as the byproduct. In fact up until now the Shuttle was generating a surplus of water which was delivered to the ISS. Skylab, IIRC, simply had a reserve of water big enough for the planned lifetime of the station. The Russians I don’t know about, but their Mir program featured regular automated cargo deliveries so maybe they just shipped more drinking water as needed.
Meh.
Donovan sang about this back in 1973 on his Cosmic Wheels album:
You may well ask now what becomes
Of liquid they consume
A pipe is led from penis head
To a unit in the room
The water is recirculated
Filtered for re-use
In case some anti-gravity-
Pee gets on the loose.