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Space station's super toilet packs up again

By Daniel Smith on Nov 16, 09 12:06 PM

ISS-toilet.jpg

Astronauts on the International Space Station might have to 'hold it in' after the station's troublesome urine-recycling unit broke down again.

The machine - which converts urine into drinking water - has had a troublesome history ever since it was installed earlier this year.

But with the shuttle Atlantis due to the visit very shortly, the space loo has picked the worst time to pack up.

During the shuttle visit, the ISS crew will be boosted up to 12 people. It's gonna be a bit crowded.

There are water supplies on board that will keep them going for months, but until the toilets fixed they'll have to bag their own urine.

Nice!

Weird Science Factoid: A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime. And what do we give them?

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Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.

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