NASA has a way of turning urine into a sports drink

Remember the opening shot of Waterworld where Kevin Costner pees into a cup, puts it through a machine, and drinks it? Would it greatly surprise you to know that NASA is working on giving this technology to the astronauts?

The process uses forward osmosis, which is “the natural diffusion of water through a semi-permeable membrane from a solution of a lower concentration to a solution with a higher concentration”. This allows you to urinate into a bag, and then use the syringe attached to the receptacle bag to turn your liquid waste into a sugary electrolyte drink.

That’s right, you can turn your pee into Gatorade! I’m not certain whether I want to be the first to drink this. Some of you are probably finding this entire subject matter to be “gross”, and I think that is a perfectly human response. I would imagine that someone has to go against their natural instincts and actually try to drink the filtered urine.