Urine is now the next generation fuel - for rockets

Image credit: NASA

For a typical space shuttle, each of the two solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle carries more than one million pounds of solid propellant, while the large external tank is loaded with more than 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - burned to form the fuel for three rocket engines. To remain in space, it has to achieve speeds about 28,000 kilometers/hour to remain in orbit. -source

Scientists are rediscovering methods to substitute the resources used in rocket engines - with urine. More information after the break.


Thought impossible? It is impossible as long as our urine is an alternate form of ammonia. Scientists have begun working on manipulating how bacteria which lived in absence of oxygen converts ammonium into hydrazine - a type of rocket fuel. This concept was first conceptualized in the 1990s when scientists discovered anammox, a type of microbe, for anaerobic ammonium oxidation. But the idea was eventually scrapped due to the insignificant results obtained.

Now what scientists are aiming is to achieve a much improved catalyst by understanding how hydrazine is made. Based on the same technology, millions of tons of ammonium has been produced from wastewater every year - enough to manufacture rocket fuel. The microbes are currently used in waterwaste treatment facilities. However, hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable unless handled in solution. Hydrazine is used in various rocket fuels and to prepare gas precursors used in air bags, on top of being used within both nuclear and conventional electrical power plant steam cycles to control concentrations of dissolved oxygen in an effort to reduce corrosion.

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