Not quite as appealing as turning water into wine, the astronauts on the international space station will soon be turning urine into drinking water. With the population of the space station scheduled to double next year to six full time residents, NASA was compelled to develop a means to avoid the costly and troublesome shipment of water, an extremely heavy payload, into space.

   In the works for decades, NASA unveiled their new $250 million machine on Wednesday which is designed to remove and purify waste from the toilets on the space station, rendering it useful for both bathing and drinking. Marybeth Edeen, of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said that while it’s obvious that the general public would be squeamish about such drinking water, “Astronauts are used to hardship and while they also have a psychological factor to overcome , they usually get past it within a couple of days.”      “Takes a little longer for the meatloaf.”

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