4 ms·

a magic box which would reliably and cheaply convert black/gray water to high quality drinking water and turn poop and organics into energy bricks to eliminate

by cstross 10y ago

a magic box which would reliably and cheaply convert black/gray water to high quality drinking water and turn poop and organics into energy bricks to eliminate sewage plants and septic tanks seems like a technology we should have invented a long time ago. We have invented such a "magic box" -- but it's large-scale: that's what municipal sewage farms mostly do (modulo the final step of turning poop into energy bricks: sewage is generally too contaminated to be economical to turn into safe biofuel without expensive treatment). Also, it relies extensively on bacterial fermentation and takes a lot of human intervention to control. The ISS toilet that keeps malfunctioning is the American one, no? Because I seem to recall the USSR cracking the urine-to-drinking-water problem on Mir a couple of decades ago. (Not Invented Here is a besetting problem with NASA, which for political reasons isn't allowed to Buy Foreign.)

internaut 10y ago
I still want my magic box. Here is why: - Get rid of water and sewer pipes. That would be huge. Together with passive house technology each and every house in a city, town or countryside would be 'off grid'. That kind of independence would make our infrastructure much less fragile. Building downwards (a recent topic) will be easier. - Our magic box is an isolation point for dangerous and toxic substances. That will prevent every household from contributing toxicity to the surrounding environment. Adaptions to new forms of waste become possible at source. If toxic elements can be compacted and stored, useful compounds/elements derived, and some used for energy, then in the future we won't need pipes anymore than we needed pneumatic tubes for sending messages/parcels once we developed automotive transport. The self driving bots will simply visit periodically for a new cargo to be delivered as industrial inputs. Since the magic box performs some level of element/compound sorting there is probably a market where your waste is automatically profiled and sold. It pays for at least part of its own operation. Last but not least many countries have no ability to construct decent infrastructure for political reasons. The magic box solves that problem in a way that scales with population. tldr; Back to the future, since 'night soil' historically was a commodity collected from each household. > The ISS toilet that keeps malfunctioning is the American one, no? Because I seem to recall the USSR cracking the urine-to-drinking-water problem on Mir a couple of decades ago. Yes. Calcium from astronaut bones (another serious issue) was clogging up the system at a much higher rate than on the terrestrial surface. I don't know how the Russians solved it but I sometimes think with Americans Business acumen and Russian Science there would be very little we couldn't get accomplished. I'm sure you've heard of Russian phage technology for medical treatment. Cures for alcoholism. One of the things that is fascinating about the Cold War is how we saw Science developing differently. That is something that should trouble the thoughts of more people.
- deleted 10y ago
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by cstross 10y ago

internaut 10y ago

I still want my magic box. Here is why: - Get rid of water and sewer pipes. That would be huge. Together with passive house technology each and every house in a city, town or countryside would be 'off grid'. That kind of independence would make our infrastructure much less fragile. Building downwards (a recent topic) will be easier. - Our magic box is an isolation point for dangerous and toxic substances. That will prevent every household from contributing toxicity to the surrounding environment. Adaptions to new forms of waste become possible at source. If toxic elements can be compacted and stored, useful compounds/elements derived, and some used for energy, then in the future we won't need pipes anymore than we needed pneumatic tubes for sending messages/parcels once we developed automotive transport. The self driving bots will simply visit periodically for a new cargo to be delivered as industrial inputs. Since the magic box performs some level of element/compound sorting there is probably a market where your waste is automatically profiled and sold. It pays for at least part of its own operation. Last but not least many countries have no ability to construct decent infrastructure for political reasons. The magic box solves that problem in a way that scales with population. tldr; Back to the future, since 'night soil' historically was a commodity collected from each household. > The ISS toilet that keeps malfunctioning is the American one, no? Because I seem to recall the USSR cracking the urine-to-drinking-water problem on Mir a couple of decades ago. Yes. Calcium from astronaut bones (another serious issue) was clogging up the system at a much higher rate than on the terrestrial surface. I don't know how the Russians solved it but I sometimes think with Americans Business acumen and Russian Science there would be very little we couldn't get accomplished. I'm sure you've heard of Russian phage technology for medical treatment. Cures for alcoholism. One of the things that is fascinating about the Cold War is how we saw Science developing differently. That is something that should trouble the thoughts of more people.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]