NASA: taking the piss - July 17, 2008
Posted on behalf of Amber Dance
In the great dramas of the space age NASA workers have shed blood, sweat and tears. Now they're being asked for another fluid.
In a memo passed around the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week, contractor Hamilton Sundstrand asked employees to donate fresh, clean urine. They need to collect 30 litres a day, even on weekends. The memo instructs donors to collect samples in a wide-mouth beaker, then “pour it into the collection.” (Are we talking just a big tank here?)
Visitors are also welcome to participate, if you happen to find yourself in Houston with a full bladder.
While the memo doesn’t spell out why they need all the pee, other reports say it’s to help design the Orion crew vehicle’s toilet. “Urine is a mess because it’s full of solids,” John Lewis, Orion’s head of life support systems, told the AP. Those solids can clog the waste-disposal apparatus, and they’re testing a new chemical to keep space toilets flowing. Fake urine is hard to make, but it’s easy to collect the stuff the workers are just flushing away. But former NASA employees on NASA Watch warn that the samples could be used to monitor employee’s health or drug habits.
This is the kind of story that headline writers love — the Washington Times has a roundup of newsy puns.
Apparently, this kind of pee drive isn’t uncommon at NASA. And an unrelated project seeks to monitor Phoenix scientists’ sleep schedule with urine samples.
