a cool article about the problems NASA has supplying the space station with water, (it costs about $40,000 per gallon to haul it up there) they have been looking at recycling the water they use. having perfected an effective water purification system, it has now become cheap enough for regular folk like us to use. now, being in the water rich US, we may not realize the impact this can have. here is an article that talks about providing good drinking water to a villiage in Iraq for 3 cents a gallon. definitely better than the government supply which runs $4 a gallon. globally, 1 billion people do not have access to fresh water and 10 million die every year from drinking tainted water. People head to Reno for all sorts of reasons. Some want to gamble. Others are looking for a hasty wedding or quickie divorce. I've come to the Biggest Little City in the World to drink my own pee. Not straight up, of course. First, I'll run it through a new NASA water purification system that collects astronaut sweat, moisture from respiration, drain water, and urine - and turns it all into drinking water. read the rest http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/urine.html
Re: If you thought gas was expensive, how about $4 for water [sarcasm mode] Another prime example of how the US manned space program wastes money! The wasted billions of dollars could have been handed out to poor people all over the world. The masses would then be empowered to purchase their own bottles of water and not be beholden to a demeaning government program which doles-out water in a piecemeal fashion. [/sarcasm mode]