🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0pMyM.F8H@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>Sorry, not correct.  The old shuttle toilet stores the solid wastes until
>landing, when it is removed and cleaned out.  Urine is separated to be
>dealt with differently (dumped, I think); this is what has been done by
>all such systems, including the Skylab one.
>


Uh, OH.  I think we have a sci.space first here.
I get to correct Henry.  Bill, Dennis watch this real careful, you'll
probably never see this again in this century.

I watched a NASA fiilm on Select late one night, where they discussed
the Skylab life support system.  Skylab had three seperate water
recovery systems.  identical in function and part.
Water was recovered from exhalation, urine and the shower/handbasin.
each system used a wick evaporator to distill h2o and then passed the
vapor through a carbon filter to remove odor and contaminants.  
For psychological reasons recycled urine was used solely forhand washing
although it met quality requirements for drinking.
The film showed the astronauts conducting daily qualtiy tests and
doing maintenance on the system.  

I imagine in the event of a system failure the contingency plan was
to valve all liquid sources back to one recycler for mission
preservation.

I think the shuttle dumps urine because the fuel cells produce lots
of water and the weight of the recycler is not cost effective.

pat