Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re:  Water dump...
Message-ID: <1990Dec28.082040.29884@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <10212@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 90 08:20:40 GMT

In article <10212@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> jdishaw@cbrown.claremont.edu writes:
>I know some of the water waste from the fuel cells gets reclaimed for use
>by the astronauts as their water supply and the rest gets dumped.  Why 
>don't they split the water back into hydrogen and oxygen and use it for
>the fuel cells again? ...

It would be possible if there were some other energy source available,
e.g. solar arrays.  At present, there isn't.  Even if there were, it would
be a relatively complex process; for example, the hydrogen and oxygen from
an electrolysis cell have a fair bit of water vapor in them, which has to
be removed before you do anything useful.  It's not impossible; at one
point the space station was going to get its maneuvering/reboost fuel by
electrolyzing waste water.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry