Buck Rogers surely couldn’t have seen this one coming, but at NASA’s request,University of Florida researchers have figured out how to turn human waste -- yes, that kind -- into rocket fuel.
Adolescent jokes aside, the process finally makes useful something that until now has been collected to burn up on re-entry. What’s more, like so many other things developed for the space program, the process could well turn up on Earth, said Pratap Pullammanappallil, a UF associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
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Ref: Abhishek S. Dhoble, Pratap C. Pullammanappallil. Design and operation of an anaerobic digester for waste management and fuel generation during long term lunar mission. Advances in Space Research, 2014; 54 (8): 1502 DOI:10.1016/j.asr.2014.06.029
Astronaut poo could power spacecraft back to Earth using new process
