CNN - NASA Contractor: Give Us Your Urine

According to cnn.com, NASA needs a lot of pee.
This is so funny.

NASA: Give us your urine

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The No. 1 need right now for some of the builders of the nation's next spaceship: Lots of urine.

A NASA contractor is seeking urine from space-program workers to test the toilets on the Orion space capsule.

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.

"Urine is a mess because urine is full of solids," Lewis said. Those solids clog the venting system for dumping pee, so keeping the waste disposal system clear is "really a challenge," he said.

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.

The Connecticut-based company building the Orion toilet needs the large volume of urine (about the daily output of 30 people) to work on urine acidity problems, said spokesman Leo Makowski.

The memo seeking daily contributions from July 21 to July 31 was not meant to go public, he said."

Not meant to go public. So good.

Thanks to cnn.com for the hilarity.

Brazil: Sugar Heaven!

Good Morning!
I was watching a great series last night on CNN: "We Were Warned: Out of Gas". It was fascinating-looking into the future when we may just run out of gas. We are all talking about it, but they really looked into the scary reality of the situation. What would we do? How would we get our food? How would we travel? How would we function as a society? What are some realistic alternatives?
One place that wont really be effected is Brazil. They have created a real solution. It is working now. It isn't an abstract idea or something that MAY work in future. It is working. They grow million of acres sugarcane and half of it gets made into sugar and the other half into ethanol. 40% of transportation fuel in Brazil is Ethanol. Within the next year, Brazil will not need to import any oil. That's it. That is truly amazing.
Check out this video.

And your car will smell like Molasses! Yum!
Why isn't the U.S. catching on, yet??
We will.
Soon.
Hopefully, soon enough.
Drive Sweet!
Niki