back to article ISS re-wee tech triumph heralds golden showers in orbit

Astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) celebrated a significant technology milestone yesterday, as the station's buggy quarter-billion-dollar urine recycler was finally declared fully operational. Jubilant, thirsty space explorers quaffed refreshing draughts of "yesterday's coffee" and cracked …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Hmm

    Fancy a bit of that recyled rat piss flavour on earth? Well you don't have to wait!! Buy a can of budwieser today!

  2. John Smith Gold badge
    Alien

    Let me be the first

    To welcome our new piss quaffing low earth orbiting overlords

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    They didn't need to build this...

    they simply could have staffed the station with fetish-loving German porn stars...they don't even need the recycler!

    Paris...well, you know...

  4. Tanuki
    Thumb Up

    Hmmm.

    Blackadder: “Well Baldrick I guess we’d better start drinking our own Urine”.

    Baldrick: “I’ve been drinking mine for weeks now!”

  5. John70

    A new definition of...

    ...going out on the piss.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can see...

    The advertising campaign to be an Astronaut now...

    "Want to go into space? Does the idea of being strapped to a rocket sound appealing? Death not an issue? Then sign up to NASA today.. because not only do you have a high chance of dying.. you get to drink Rat P*ss too..."

    Where do I sign?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Rat piss???

    I am sure they are SPF rats (specific pathogen free). If not we might have a nasty case of Leptospirosis on board... Well, if not, they are still taking the piss....

  8. Elmer Phud
    Happy

    Another one for the list?

    "A full complement of 72 rats would equal about one human in terms of water reclamation,"

    Right, I'm off to have about 10 rats worth.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ tanuki

    it wasn't baldrick that had been drinking his for weeks, it was the legless sea captain!

  10. Dave
    Stop

    Respiration

    "A full complement of 72 rats would equal about one human in terms of water reclamation,"

    But what about actual usage? My school biology is a little rusty, (too much exposure to water?) but does the human body not actually _use_ water for something or other? I know that most of it comes out as sweat and piss, but surely not all, so 'wee' need to know that ratio.

  11. Dan
    Coat

    That machine...

    ...looks like something that Egon Spengler would store a class 4 fully-formed free-roaming ectoplasm in.

    /nerd mode off

  12. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Osiris
    Happy

    Shortly to man up to six-person crews

    Once we have that number up a bit more, whos for hosting the next series of Big Brother up there?

    Watching them drink (unrecycled, preferably) rat's piss won't be nearly as much fun as watching them being 'evicted' through an airlock each week.

  14. Harrison Grundy
    Thumb Up

    Best Headline Ever

    Headlines like this make me want a print version of el reg to take to the office.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Get Used to It

    Increasingly, terrestrial metropolitan areas will be forced to similar recycling.

  16. Roger Denholm
    Boffin

    @GetUsedToIt

    actually ol' son, in one of the northern Antipodean burgs of Oz, this was the Next Big Thing.

    Right up until the floods started a few months ago.

  17. Andus McCoatover
    Thumb Up

    Oh, God!!

    <<We have completely checked out the system from end to end>>

    Yep, right. Being Friday I'm going out to get rat-faced.

    Lewis owes me yet another keyboard.

  18. A J Stiles
    Boffin

    Honestly, guys

    Ditch the mediaeval superstition and stuff, will you?

    Every molecule of hydrogen oxide on this planet has been through someone, or something, several times already. In a smaller environment, where there are fewer molecules of hydrogen oxide to go around, what else are you supposed to do?

  19. Jonathan Richards
    Stop

    Collecting from the rats

    Given that you can't (probably) train a rat bouncing around in microgravity to use a miniature space-pisser, I suppose there must just be some way of extracting the moisture which appears in the murine environment (hopefully separated from the human environment). A worse possibility is my vision of six dozen pinioned and catheterized rodents doing their bit for recycling and the advancement of science, while wishing for a nice homely sewer somewhere.

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