"The shuttle also brings a $250m wastewater recycling kit designed to purify urine and evaporated perspiration into clean drinking water.

"We did a blind taste test of the water," said NASA's Bob Bagdigian, the system's lead engineer told the BBC. "Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."

$250 million? TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY BLOODY FUCKING MILLION!!!???

Seriously? Dont we have better things to spend money on then THIS?

And not to mention "We did a blind taste test"......I really hope to god that the testers WERE blind....else they might have noticed the yellow tinge to the water.

/Hat, coat, funnel please. Thanks

it's the blooming Fisher Space Pen all over again! The Septics spend a fortune on inventing some technology and the Ruskies use a pencil!

I mean... certain breweries have just been putting bubbles in it an selling it for years (and I suspect Iron Brew is the Scots taking the piss out of all of us somehow)

I've seen Waterworld ... I'm sure Kevin Costner didn't have a $250m filter on his little boat!

Yours is the jacket with the wet handprint (no towels in the gents)

...but, it's less than one dollar for every septic out there. :-)

OffBeatMammal: According to Snopes, the story of the Fisher Space Pen vs. the Ruskie has a grain of truth to it, but is far from the full truth: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

But still, the idea of spending that much on a water-treatment facility that only needs to be big enough to support 6 people does sound ludicrous. Except that it also has to work in weightlessness, survive temperature extremes, survive the G-forces of take-off, and needs to be utterly reliable. (While having your water-supply dry up is not nearly as bad as your oxygen running out, it is still rather inconvenient. )

Then, add in the research needed, plus the fact that it's a one-off construction, with no economies of scale or broad amortising of costs, and all the testing to make sure it does meet those requirements, and you can easily end up with a device costing upwards of $25 million.

What's that? You say it actually costs $250 million, not just $25 million?

MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!!! Sorry NASA, I tried my best to defend you, but by Einsein's Beard, how the flying fk do you justify that?

Here I thought it was a breakthrough. You know, like Tang.

By blind test, did they mean that the drinkers did not go blind afterwards?

OK, OK, I'll get my coat, the title deserves it, but someone had to try to be first...

1. It also works as a dehumidifier.

2. It has to use reverse osmosis and/or a couple of other technologies which require no extra chemicals and it takes full "dump" not just "miller light" on the input so there is also the issue of filtering, solid separation and so on.

3. It has to have MTBF in the 5+ years range.

4. It all has to work in a weightless environment

So with all due respect, a piss filter will not do here. While 250M is a bit on the extreme, developing such a device with less than a double digit (million) budget does not look like possible.

<astronaut> Do we drink each others or stick to our own?

just issue stillsuits to the ISS crew?

The one with the gom jabbar in the pocket, thanks.

Would dehydrated turds burning up on re-entry be shiiting star?

I know that Mir stank inside of stale sweat and farts. But is not also the case that taste and smell don't work so good?

What was the name of the space chimp who beat himself off as stress-relief? I've worked with people like that.

Where do you think the water down here comes from?

There's really pure water here in London - it must be, it's been filtered through so many kidneys.

...licence that technology out and you will easy make that back and plus with future missions going further and needing to fly light this will pay itself anyway.

Look beyond your noses people, it's like the Labour government on El Reg at the moment.

..simply have one extra shuttle launch, with nowt but a big-fuc*k-off water tank on board, and float it near the ISS, connected by a hose?? 'Bout the same cost, and bit more reliable.

Who's gonna get a swift nack in the kickers when that high-tech piss-filter goes the same way as that bloody 'fridge, and gets tossed to Earth?

(Incidentally, would that be "giving the piss")?

I stayed up and watched it last night...

The TV presenter actually tried the water and said it tasted "no worse than any other bottled water"... even after the tech describing the machine said of the sample "there's probably a bit of me in there"

Yes, $250m is expensive, but they will have got an extremely useful bit of kit out of it... how much would it cost to send regular supplies of water up to the station over the lifetime of the unit? Especially when the shuttles stop flying? Also, they will have at least 3 of them (a spare and a test unit) and several spares I expect, so the price per unit does come down a bit

All went smoothly, other than the "no-go for launch" at 15 minutes before because some pleb had forgotten to pin a door back in the white room!!

Also, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper for some reason is known as "Heidi Piper"

I dunno why people are complaining so much about the $250M. Either you want manned spaceflight or you don't. Anything involving manned spaceflight is expensive because you have to care about little details like not making holes in your astronauts that you needn't care about for robotic missions.

Would $250M not spent of space-khazis be better spent elsewhere? Unlikely. Governments don't tend to work that way. If the money and engineering resources weren't spent on that they'd be spent on, eg. military space-laser-zap tech. Or ID cards. Or maybe the money could be spent paying chavs to have more unwanted babies. Or to strategy boutiques to come up with new logos for the Department of Personal Information Misplacement.

Water recovery systems will be critical to missions, eg. a manned trip to Mars, or colonization of the Moon. Check out the price of launching a days supply of water from Earth to the Moon. Or Mars.

By all means argue against the cost-effectiveness of manned spaceflight, but if you're for it you have to accept that the costs can be eye-watering.

Paris: because she knows a thing or two about taking the piss.

The slightly stained anorak, olease

...we've recycled the water supply so many times it's beginning to taste like Dutch lager.

... I Can't Believe It's Not Piss.

I think its a go-er.

Pencils are a great idea in space, because what you really need in a zero-gravity environment relying on life-or-death electronics is tiny conductive graphite particles floating around. Excellent work.

(That's sarcasm, in case you missed it.)

"What was the name of the space chimp who beat himself off as stress-relief?"

That would be Dubya.

I had some in the pub last night. It said pils on the bottle, but I think that must be a mis-spelling.

Hm... it seems like NASA has made the first step towards the Fremen Stillsuit. I recall that one recycled water from both #1 and #2's.

Arrakis is waiting!

...so you won't attract a Worm