New Station System To Save Big Bucks

A new U.S. water treatment system set to be shipped up to the International Space Station next month will save NASA and its partners an estimated $62 million a year -- money that otherwise would be spent hauling water to the outpost.

Now packed away in shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay, the Water Recovery System is deemed key to plans to expand the resident crew size on the station to six from three next spring.

The system collects urine, condensation from the cabin atmosphere and both crew perspiration and respiration. Then, through a a series of chemical treatments and filters, it produces water clean enough to drink.

Kelly Humphries, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said astronauts and cosmonauts are allotted about one gallon of water per day -- 3.5 liters, or 0.9 gallons, to be exact.

The onboard water supply comes from two sources:

First is what NASA calls "deliverables." That is, water hauled up to the station aboard Russian Progress space freighters or European Jules Verne cargo carriers.

Also included in this category: water produced as a byproduct when liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are combined in shuttle fuel cells to generate electricity to operate all spaceship systems. Rather than dumping the water overboard, NASA bags it and transfers it to the station from visiting shuttles.

The second source comes from a Russian reclaimation system that produces potatable water by recycling condensation in the cabin atmosphere -- as well as crew perspiration and respiration.

Set for launch aboard Endeavour Nov. 14 and delivery to the station three days later, the new U.S. Water Recovery System will generate enough water to reduce deliverables by 65 percent, Humphries said.

That's a reduction of about 2,850 liters -- or 743 gallons -- per year. And that's a big cost savings.

Water weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon, and the average cost of launching a pound of payload to low Earth orbit is about $10,000.

The Water Recovery System will reduce the amount of water that must be delivered to the station each year by 6,196 pounds.

Or almost $62 million.

And even in the aerospace world, that's not chump change.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge and save the NASA image of the Italian-built Leonardo cargo carrier -- also known as a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, or MPLM -- being transferred from a payload canister to the Payload Changeout Room at launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center earlier this week. The Water Recovery System is part of the cargo being launch aboard Endeavour when it blasts off Nov. 14 on an International Space Station outfitting mission. The primary goal of the mission is to deliver the supplies and equipment needed to expand the size of resident crews at the station to six from three next spring. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett.