Space Age Water Purification Method - Nasa Method of Recycling Urine

Space age Water Purification method

NASAs method/talk of recycling urine

Watson, Traci. "On tap in space: Urine will not go to waste." n. page. Web. 31 Jul 2011. <http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4858780&page=1>.

NASA has been working on a way to turn astronauts pee in to water, because the astronauts won't be able to have months on end supply of water at the ready. There has been about $250 million dollars invested in the water purification system for astronauts. There has already been other ways astronauts have had to get water such as from laundry water and sweat. Also astronauts already have an idea of what circumstances they have to deal with and having to drink their own purified pee is just one more thing to deal with. If all goes well, this system will be on the space station and eventually a toilet with a purification system running through. Also it costs about $5,000 per kilogram around 2.2lbs to send water in to space. So having a filtration system on the ISS would be beneficial.

Being able to have some sort of system like this back on earth for third world countries to use, could really help change things around for some countries. Also a lot of third world countries have just about the worst drinking supplies. A lot of countries such as India, China, Africa etc all bathe, go to the bathroom, clean clothes in a river or some sort of waterway, and that is the same place, those people get there drinking water. Overall this article seems to be a pretty accurate up to date article. The space toilet is a great idea for astronauts, but it would be nice if this system could be made cheaper or something to help benefit other countries and villages that don't have any luxuries of a bathroom or anything really sanitary for that matter.

NASA's Recycling Bag turns Urine to a Sugary Drink

Champion, Cliff. "NASA's Pee Recycling Bag Turns Urine Into a Sports Drink Read more: NASA's Pee Recycling, Forward Osmosis Bag is Out of This World | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World." n. pag. Web. 31 Jul 2011. <http://inhabitat.com/nasas-pee-recycling-forward-osmosis-bag-turns-urine-into-an-out-of-this-world-beverage/>.

The bag that NASA is working on is a space bag that will have forward osmosis to take a bag of urine and through a valve and then in to the space bag and within a few hours it will be turned in to a sugary drink.

Being able to use a bag and some pieces of equipment instead of machinery that runs a lot of electricity on the International Space Station. Helps the ISS to save as much electricity as possible. I think this idea would be useful in third world countries, although with this idea of a space bag, like the creators mentioned they are afraid of buildup of urea. Which comes from human urine and that could end up just causing one more problem on top of all the other water pollution concerns. Whereas the invention of the toilet that turns urine to water, but uses more machinery and costs a whole lot more, than the space bag invention. The article was very current and up to date on some of the new urine to water technology and how we can go about cleaning our water supply.

Being able to integrate the ideas of being able to recycle your own urine with a special type of bag, we could be making and sending them to third world countries or with missionaries that could help at least