Space… the final frontier. That means no conveniently located rest areas.
Science fiction writers have always pushed the bounds of our imagination by showing us worlds in which androids walk among us, highways become skyways, and some of the androids walking among us are hooker-bots. While many of these fancifully conceived technologies may be a ways off, one crucial bit of space age technology is now a reality: the purification of our precious bodily fluids.
While our urine is already a refreshing beverage, as former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai can tell you, the merit of its imbibement for actual nutrition and hydration has remained subjective. Nothing does the body better than good old H2O, and astronauts’ bodies are no exception, even with their years of scientific experience. However, after acknowledging that transporting water to ongoing space missions was becoming a hassle, NASA was hard-up for a solution. All their scientists needed to do was take their attention off the stars and onto their pee. After only months of traumatic taste testing, science prevailed, and the purification system was born.
Never again will space workers go thirsty, “And the taste is great!” says astronaut Michael Barratt. In a recent poll since the technology’s development, space station residents were shown to prefer their own urine to the previous favorite, Tang in a space pouch.
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