"John Doe" wrote in message
...
There is a natural repulsion to drinking urine. One has to use logic to
overcome that repulsion and be convinced the liquid was treated and is
really water.

Agreed. I suppose I find it worrisome that so many people have the
reasoning skills to overcome this sort of natural repulsion.

As another example, farmers routinely spread fertilizer on their fields to
increase yields. Bat guano used to be a very popular fertilizer. To this
day, a manure spreader is not an uncommon piece of equipment to find on a
farm. I wonder how many people would freak out if NASA proposed using human
feces as fertilizer for plants grown in a greenhouse on the moon or Mars?

What worries me a bit is that the process doesn't appear to be
foolproof. The fact that the first batch of treated urine, when analysed
back on earth showed to be "good, but not good enough for drinking" is
worrysome. If the process isn't 100% foolproof, will they have to test
each batch of water produced ?

This is surely the first time that this particular set of equipment has been
used for this purpose in a microgravity environment. There is bound to be a
learning curve. This is *exactly* the sort of experiment which should be
done on ISS. I wish them luck with this new equipment.

Jeff
--
"Many things that were acceptable in 1958 are no longer acceptable today.
My own standards have changed too." -- Freeman Dyson