"The limiting factor in urine distillation is actually the high level of calcium
from disintegrating astronaut bone, a nice example of how problems in space find
ways to compound one another."
With humanity's future probably (?) driving more of us to leave the planet, I'm glad these things are being studied. Where there's a will, there's a way.
[1] "Long-term space missions’ effects on the human organism: what we do know and what requires further research" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10896920
I'm also surprised that the vast majority of the output carbon is in the form of CO2 rather than feces.
It's all rather obvious in retrospect, it was just nice to see crystallized like this.
Not sure if you know, but in the same vein, I was shocked when I learned ~50% of the biomass of trees is carbon (right, we knew that), but also that the carbon came from CO2 the tree respirated. Also makes total sense in hindsight, but still think it's so cool.
The trees literally build their mass from the air and sunlight (and yes, obviously also water and trace minerals from the roots).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280646417_Acid_gas_...
There's been more then a few metallurgy lab deaths because someone spilled a substantial amount of HF on themselves and didn't realize it.
> On the Mir space station, this used to happen organically. Collecting water was a grubby job that involved chasing beach-ball sized spheres of condensate around the colder parts of the spacecraft with trash bags before they could climb into the walls and cause mayhem. Crew members spent three to four hours a day on this dirty and difficult task.
That sounds, frankly, horrible.
It made me think that the average space module probably smells like moist, reheated ass, too.
It's a cliche that space exploration creates discoveries that improve life back here on Earth. In the topics discussed in this essay, water reclamation and waste recycling especially, the future solutions developed I think will lead to improvements for terrestrial living.