Waste Wanted

No, we're not talking about chambers of commerce pitching for the building of temporary storage facilities in their districts; we're talking about NASA...and a different kind of spent fuel. From the AP, via Slashdot:

Space program contractor Hamilton Sundstrand is seeking urine from workers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of its work on the new Orion space capsule that eventually would take astronauts to the moon, according to an internal memo posted on the Web site Nasawatch.com.

The need is voluminous: 30 liters a day, which translates into nearly 8 gallons. Even on weekends.

Designers of the Orion, which will park unoccupied in space for up to six months while astronauts work on the moon, have to solve a pressing issue of getting rid of stored urine, said John Lewis, NASA's head of life support systems for Orion.

...NASA has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because "you can't make fake urine," Lewis said.