Did You Watch Dune?

Sunday and my last day of relaxation, mental relaxation, before I go back to where I belong…..bitching!

The movie by Delaurentiss, not the one made for the SciFi channel, that one was pretty bad……the book by Herbert that started the whole Dine phenom……if you saw it then you will probably remember after the House Atredis took over control of Arakis and the Duke and his son went on an inspection tour of the spice mining operation…..they met with the imperial ecologist and were shown ho to properly wear the stillsuit……the special suit worn while in the desert….it took sweat, pee and feces and processed it into drinking water and the walking provided the energy to fuel the process…..remember?

So far fetched, huh?

Maybe not so…….

Soldiers already use similar technology to filter out parasites, bacteria, viruses and other contaminants from dirty fluids, including urine, but NASA’s adapted baggie system has yet to prove itself in space.

“This could be a first step toward recapturing the humidity from our sweat, from our breath, even from our urine, and recycling it and making it drinkable,” said NASA project scientist and experiment leader Howard Levine, who made a reference to water-recycling “stillsuits” used on a desert world in the science fiction series Dune.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station already drink water from a pee-recycling machine delivered several years ago, but it saps power from the orbital laboratory’s limited supply. The space-ready water conversion kit, however, won’t need an external power source because it relies on a passive property of fluids called forward osmosis.

NASA’s recycler will use a sugary solution injected into a semi-permeable inner bag, which is nested inside an outer bag. Dirty fluid that’s pumped into the outer bag will slowly pass through the inner bag and into the sugary solution, leaving behind its contaminants. On Earth, the double-sack system makes about a liter of sports drink-like fluid in four to six hours.

(as reported on Wired Science website)

Looks like life is imitating art……….All we need now are the Fremen and a couple of big ass worms!