This just might be…
On the other hand, it’s evidence that astronauts are made of sterner stuff than most of us. But then again, we already knew that.
[NOTE: The matter I’m referring to begins in paragraph four of the article.]
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Ewwwww…….!
I mean, just….ewwwwwww!
Brings back memories of first read of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”
As an aside the worst movie ever made of one of the best books I ever read.
Neo,
For a while here in Germany a group pushed drinking the unclarified stuff as some sort of medical therapy. For obvious reasons, I never explored the articles beneath the headlines. Germany is VERY big on alternative medicine. I tend to be of the take-two.aspirins school myself.
Hey, Gandhi did it routinely, and without the filtration system.
Bear Grylls did it – without the filtration system. How bad can it be?
Gandhi is consistently someone not to follow.
Silly to care…
its akin to magical properties of matter… that once its contaminated, even if its completely changed and no trace of original is left… we still associate, as if by magic, qualities that it no longer has.
we do the same thing with lucky charms, new age crystals, and tons of other things.
what i find funny though… is you can throw waste in your garden, the plant sucks it up, converts it, and you are proud to eat the tomato..
but if man does it, its tainted… beavers build dams, and thats ok, man builds dams and he is unnatural.. (which is impossible since man is natural, and so everything man does is natural, even if we dont like it).
i will say that they are also testing a new system too… that was in the news the past few days.
the same effect happens when we give something a nasty name and its natural… suddenly it has ‘chemical’ properties… but everything is chemical… its funny to ask people to define what a chemical is… the answers are incredible…
and you can do the same thing by putting crunchy rice in a chocolate bar, but tell people its roaches.
meanwhile… we are not a product of our genes which hardcoded the program that has this kind of odd failure in our new environment…
what i find funny is that i cant eat some of the things that people eat (ants, insects)… however, the guy that eats that stuff on the TV cant eat durian, and i can.
want to experience disgust? get a chunk of warm durian when you have never experienced it.
some of the literature on ‘contamination’ psychology is really interesting….
oh… there is a new movie out… starts jack nicholson… he plays a very wealthy man who, because of cancer meets a poor black man… great movie…
well, one of the things in the movie is a type of coffee that the wealthy man drinks and crows about all through the movie…
i will not say what it is and spoil the movie… but i was already very familiar with the type of coffee…
if you think that the space station thing is yuckoo… this coffe would make you swoon…
and if you knew how other things were made that we partake of and experience… it would surprise you… from a worm in agave or tequila… to fetuses in india… and lots of other things…
Artfldgr, you bring to mind an old Italian movie I once saw, Mondo Cane (A Dog’s World). It was a travelogue of places around the world and the “bizarre” and “disgusting” habits of the locals, dietary and otherwise.
We drink recycled waste water pretty much every time we drink anything containing water. Be it human, fish, bear, or whatever at some point in it’s life-cycle it has been urine. In fact, at this point in time chances are it has been moistening up some piece of fecal mater in the past too.
I never really bothered to check the if the math was correct, but I read a thing a while back that talked about the rate that air is circulated and noted that chances are one out of your next three breaths will contain a particle of air that Napoleon breathed. At the very least we can go back far enough to find *someone* that this is true of. At the very least anyone in Germany is breathing Hitler Air.
The truly disgusting thing is that in order to smell stuff we *must* breath small particles of it up int our nose and allow them to come in contact with special nerves that sense “smell”. Yes, that stinky bathroom means you are inhaling small pieces of fecal matter. I know as a kid I spent about a year trying to breath in many places after my elementary science class informed us of that.
And if you want to eat much of anything again I suggest you do not learn to cook. Gelatin (and many many deserts that use it ) is boiled bones and often other bits of animals, cheese is rotten milk curks – lots and lots of bacteria there, and then do not even think about alcohol (the fecal matter/urine of those little yeast critters as they eat sugars). And then – given the current dust up over Palin standing in front of some turkeys being killed – go look at a slaughter house if you never want to eat meat again (well, that is if you think it somehow becomes a steak in a pleasing manner in sight, sound, and especially smell).
But then, I guess I would like a few more layers between my urine and mouth too – but I wouldn’t be *that* squeamish over it. I mean, lets face it – I’m eating food one step away from manure (the organic artichokes were cheaper than the non-organic ones this week) that has lots of rotten secretions from a cows breast (cheese) and unfertilized reproductive tissue (eggs) at this very moment. Of course that sounds better if I call it artichoke dip. Heck, I even sprung for the cows breast secretions that have been rotting for an especially long time (aged Parm) as it was on sale too.
Water is heavy, easy to recover, and able to be perfectly purified: go astronauts! (I admit I’d rather not drink out of a clear glass under these circumstances.)
And too right about Dune, Dane. Yeesh, what a dog!
Back in the days when I was a young Marine, I went through desert warfare/survival training.
Part of the survival training was in learning how to process our piss into drinkable water.
Dig a hole in the dirt or sand. Piss in the hole. Place an empty can in the bottom of the hole. Place a piece of plastic over the hole. Place a small rock or pebble on top of the plastic in its center, over the can.
Heat evaporates the water. The water condenses on the plastic. The water collects at the low point in the plastic and drips into the can.
Beats dieing of thirst.
Wow, I picked the right post to read during lunch time, didn’t I?
Since SF novels are being bandied about here, the one I’m reminded of is Alien, by Alan Dean Foster. The characters are forever sighing about their “recycled food” — which apparently doesn’t taste bad, but they just don’t like the thought of it.
The biological facts of life are rarely pretty. For a long-term space habitat, where resources are precious, the idea of bringing up enough drinking water for the entire stay — and collecting or ejecting the urine — seems pretty silly.
Just the same, as others have said here, I’m glad I don’t have to drink the stuff myself!
Reading that didn’t bother me in the least. From the time I took seventh grade science I’ve been aware of the water cycle and that all water is used over and over and over. I’m shocked everyone isn’t aware of that.
That Marine Corp piss-in-a-hole and recover the distillate method would yield essentially pure water. Clouds are distilled water. Go look in a reservoir and then look at your tap water. Same stuff, just purified along the way. Our stone-age ancestors drank straight out of rivers and lakes. We have far better and more pure water then they had.
All this reminds me of a joke from the 70’s:
I’ve decided to give up drinking water.
Really? Why?
Because fish fuck in it!
😛