I'm forced to wonder why on earth* they thought that this needed dampers anyway. In other centrifuge systems (the spin cycle of your washing machine is a good example) the uneven load causes vibration which needs to be damped. Surely though, the piss is a homogenous liquid and, therefore, will not produce asymmetric loading?

*This may be the answer of course. Testing the thing on earth would mean that gravity would cause the piss to tend towards the bottom of the drum producing an uneven load and vibration. Could they really have been dumb enough not to factor in that it would be operating in a zero-gravity environment and therefore not subject to this problem?

Could this be the famous 'dark matter' all the boffinry is looking for?

what's wrong with drinking recycled piss -- you Londoners have done it for years.

I know it tastes foul. My Manchester drinking water comes from Cumbrian hills and it tastes good.

I envision scenes from either Easy Rider where Jack Nicholson takes a swig

of whiskey and "Nic! Nic! Nic!" OR the hapless cop that pulled over the miscreants

in Dumb and Dumber and insists on sampling that "beer" they've been drinking,

his face contorts worse than anything in the Matrix.

I can't imagine drinking me cabin mates piss on the way to Mars and back. Surely space

travel is insanity bound.

<<Based on that success, program managers decided they will leave the distillation assembly in(?) orbit>>

Alternatively, it'll go the way as that bloody 'fridge.

Isn't ammonia contained in both? Well, fuc*k me, they should'a seen that coming (or going). Sod my guts.

Why are they using an overly complicated centrifuge/boiler in the first place? I was under the impression that reverse osmosis filters were a hell of a lot simpler and more reliable.

... NASA astronauts prefer their drinks to be stirred, not shaken.

I don't know either. An earlier edition of the WPA ran fine for 4 days in Spacelab with the hard-mounted centrifuges. Then they changed the design... why? Obviously they found out that wasn't a good idea. On the other hand, you've got to remember this is the first time anyone has done anything like this.

This is the REALLY important stuff ISS needs to do, as it applies directly to long interplanetary missions where you don't have a Shuttle/Soyuz showing up every month.

They took the wheels off before lauching. They'd be a bit useless, wot?

......Takes an enormous presure to work is f'ing slow and as the p'ss is boiled it is sterile also reverse osmosis needs fresh water to work at least on one side of the membrane.