The Official NASA Guide To Drinking Your Own Urine

By Ed Grabianowski

If you're going on a long space trip, you'll soon realize that you can't carry all the fresh water you'll need with you. The cost of getting all that water into space would destroy your budget before you ever built a single photon torpedo launcher. The answer, of course, is recycling. Those childhood dreams of traveling to space probably didn't include drinking your own sweat and pee.

If you'd like to enjoy a cool pint of fresh water in space, the "shipped-from-Earth" variety will cost you $15,000. That's why the International Space Station captures every bit of evaporated water possible, collects it and purifies it for use as drinking water. While astronauts were apparently fine with drinking each other's sweat, exhaled water vapor and shower water, NASA hadn't crossed the urine barrier yet. But that's about to change.

Last week, Space Shuttle Endeavor carried aloft a Michigan Technological University designed Water Recovery System. Here's how it turns pee into a refreshing drink:

1). Urine is distilled, removing a bunch of the "bad stuff" you wouldn't want to drink.
2). It's combined with the other waste water (the sweat and shower water).
3). Solids are filtered out. You don't want someone's hair in your morning drink.
4). The water passes through a bunch of multi-filtration beds made of materials that remove contaminants either by absorbing them or negating them via ion exchange.
5). At this point, the water holds some non-organics and solvents. A reactor breaks those impurities down into carbon dioxide, water and ions.
6). Leaving behind the CO2 and the ions gives you water that's as pure as a mountain stream. Probably purer. Image by: NASA.

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Sun shines on future Mars colonies

by Paul Marks

Solar power might actually be viable on Mars, despite its distance from the Sun (Image: Detlev Van Ravenswaay / SPL)

WHILE NASA's Phoenix lander slowly dies of power loss in the darkening Martian arctic, the space agency is weighing up the pros and cons of nuclear and solar power for a human mission to Mars.

Vocal protests accompanied the launch of the deep-space probes Cassini, Galileo and New Horizons, which all contained nuclear power generators, with anti-nuclear groups saying any disaster could rain radioactive debris on Earth. Off-planet colonies powered with fission reactors are likely to raise similar concerns.

The question is whether solar power can generate the 100 kilowatts that Martian explorers will need to power their life-support systems and to make the fuel needed for the journey back to Earth. To find out, NASA commissioned a study by energy specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It was generally thought that the sun's rays would be too weak on Mars to supply a significant amount of energy. However, the MIT team concludes that with a careful choice of location, solar energy can provide all the power a colony would need - even in the teeth of the Red Planet's infamous dust storms.

The team assessed 13 energy-generation systems, MIT engineer Wilfried Hofstetter told the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, UK, last month, comparing nuclear fission reactors, solar arrays that track the sun, non-tracking thin-film solar arrays laid on the Martian surface, and radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs), which use a decaying chunk of radioisotope to create heat that is used to generate electricity.

The MIT team's main aim, says Hofstetter, was to ensure that astronauts squeeze the most power from every kilogram of energy-generating equipment they take to Mars, but always have adequate back-up too.

While nuclear is the clear winner because it can produce a constant supply of power, a large solar array with fuel cells to store power matches its performance - but only if it is sited at a latitude between 0 and 40 degrees north of the Martian equator. "Southern latitudes have much less solar energy available most of the year," says Hofstetter.

Assuming a mission can take several 2-metre-wide rolls of thin-film solar panel material to Mars, a 100-metre by 100-metre surface array would provide the 100 kilowatts needed at 25 degrees north. The team calculates that it would take two crew members 17 hours to lay out the array and get it working, though robotic rollout is also a possibility.

Of course, Mars is no benign environment - dust storms are a major hazard and degrade solar arrays. But planetary scientist Colin Pillinger of the Open University in the UK says they shouldn't be a problem: "Dust storms tend to start in well-known places in the southern hemisphere as it warms up, so it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid them," he says.

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Race on to build world's first space elevator

By Andrew Ramadge and Kate Schneider

AUSTRALIA could play a key role in the 21st century space race, with competition heating up between Japan and the US to build the world's first "space elevator".

As the technology required to create a physical link between Earth and outer space becomes closer to a reality, discussions of next-generation space exploration have been given new life.

Japan announced recently that it was researching plans to build a space elevator – a link to space that could transport cargo and even tourists – for as little as 1 trillion yen ($11 billion).

"Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, Shuichi Ono, told The Times.

The news is believed to have shaken up scientists at NASA, who have traditionally focused on rockets to reach space but could now be considering following Japan's suit.

Australia too may play a part in the creation of a space elevator, with a region off the west coast identified as ideal for an Earth dock – the structure that would anchor the link.

Unlike some science-fiction depictions of a giant tower or elevator reaching into the stars, modern plans for a space elevator rely on a cable being stretched between a satellite and a platform on Earth along which vehicles could travel.

One location being considered by NASA for such a platform is off the coast of Perth, according to the West Australian co-author of the book Leaving The Earth By Space Elevator, Philip Ragan.

Mr Ragan, who wrote the book with former NASA scientist and space elevator expert Dr Bradley C. Edwards, said there were 12 criteria that had to be met when choosing a possible location for the Earth port including consideration of storms and lightning.

"We identified that the Indian Ocean, about 500km off of Perth, was a prime location to site the Earth end of the cable," Mr Ragan said.

"A second preferred location is about 2000 miles (3218km) south of Hawaii... (which would be) closer for Americans in air time but logistically more remote for servicing by shipping."

An Australian Senate report released last week backed up Mr Ragan's claims and said the West Australian oil industry's expertise in building offshore platforms could prove useful if the plans went ahead.

"The Indian Ocean off Western Australia has been identified as an ideal location for a space elevator – a thin carbon nanotube connecting a barge to a space station, along which supplies could be carried up," said the report.

Professor Lachlan Thompson, from RMIT's School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, said Australia would also be an ideal partner for space agencies because its land mass was not divided into different nations.

"Australia is an ideal place for suborbital and orbital tourism due to it being a large land mass not divided by countries," he said.

Technical challenges

Professor Thompson, who co-chaired the Space Elevator Technology Session at the 59th International Astronautical Congress in Scotland last month, said the creation of a space elevator, while not yet possible, was supported by theoretical evidence.

“Elevators to space can be made to work... eight papers presented (at the congress) supported strongly the idea is sound," he said.

If a space elevator was built, it would provide a method of transportation to a space platform floating about 36,000km or more above the Earth. But where to from there?

Many of the costs associated with space exploration stem from trying to get off Earth itself – by overcoming the planet's gravitational pull using extremely expensive rocket blasts.

Missions launched from a platform already outside of the Earth's atmosphere would be cheaper and more efficient, allowing for more exploration projects.

However plans for a space elevator rely on finding a material strong enough to form the cable, or "ribbon", stretched between Earth and space. Scientists say the ribbon would need to be 150 times stronger than steel to be stable.

"The stresses in the cable due to its own weight are partially relieved by the mass in space at the end of the cable, so that's not a problem," Professor Thompson said.

"But the loads are enormous and get dangerously high once the elevator starts oscillating as it moves along the cable.

"The first challenge is to develop fibres that have sufficient strength-to-weight ratio so that they will take the load without being so ridiculously large in diameter that it could never be deployed.

"The next is to work out how to make the cable, which is why everyone is looking at nanofibre technology."

Mr Ragan said it was likely that carbon nanofibre cables strong enough to sustain a space elevator would be produced within the next five years, and could be tested in space within a decade.

"If anyone can do it, the Japanese certainly can as they are currently the world's largest producer and user of carbon nanofibre at lower strengths," Mr Ragan said.

Mr Ragan said competition between space agencies would heat up in coming years as the technology to build a space elevator became available and the cost efficiency of launching missions from outside the Earth's gravitational pull became clear.

"When the appropriate strength carbon nanofibre is definitely in production, interest will intensify," he said.

"The first country to deploy a space elevator will have a 95 per cent cost advantage and could potentially control all space activities."

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