NASA Wants Your Urine

NASA needs your urine and is holding a drive to benefit the Orion Program, whose aim is to put astronauts back on the moon by 2020. The urine donation will aid engineers who are working on designing the new spaceship's toilet.

If you're in the area at the Johnson Space Center, stop by at 2200 Space Park and donate your urine for a good cause.

From Discovery News: "Donations will be treated with a chemical that can hold solid particulates in the liquid so they don't clog up the tubing in microgravity, said Leo Makowski, company spokesman for Hamilton Sundstrand, a contractor designing the new spaceship's toilet.

"This is a preliminary test to see if this chemical is going to work the same way as it did on the [space] shuttle," Makowski told Discovery News."

In a memo sent out to employees, it outlined a few rules regarding the donation:

-Pure urine samples only - no blood

-Maximum contribution - 350 milliliters

The drive is being held by Hamilton Sundstrand and begins July 21st and runs daily to the end of July until the coffers are full. Their daily goal is to obtain 30 liters (about 8 gallons!) and welcome all bladder contributions. Donations will be made semi-confidential; you will be assigned a donor number so that they can keep track of donations with listing any names.

They are only taking fresh urine samples. Anything older than one hour will not be used. So for those of you that wake up in the middle of the night to take your pee, don't save it, it'll be useless.

Source : Discovery News

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New 5-Stroke Engine

Our four stroke engines have been around for a very long time and while many small changes have been made to them over those many years, the basic principal of operation has remained the same. Now, a new engine design that uses an additional stroke may be taking over the number 1 position when it comes to small powerplants.

Ilmor Engineering is the firm behind the new design and is currently able to get 130 horsepower and 122lb.ft out of the little engine. Considering the total displacement is 700cc, those numbers are fairly impressive. By using a turbocharger and keeping rotating mass at a minimum, the new engine is said to already be at least 5% more efficient that it's four stroke counterparts.
The team is currently working improving the valvetrain design and testing other turbochargers to see if they can improve on the design even more. They also plan on experimenting with different displacements to see if they can reduce the size, and therefore overall weight, in an attempt to make the new engine even more appealing.

The innovative design uses 3 different cylinders to produce power, but only two of these actually fire. The outside cylinders go through the normal procedure of intake, compression, combustion and exhaust to make their power. The cylinder located in the center however, receives the exhaust gas from one of the outside cylinders and allows it to expand even more, creating power.
The outside cylinders alternate to keep pressure even across the board. The result of this additional step is a torque curve similar to a diesel while still being able to ignite from a spark plug and without the emissions associated with diesel fuel.

Even without the reduction in size, Ilmor engineers are estimating a final output of around 150 horsepower but the time they are finished tweaking. Considering most engines of the same output are nearly 3 times as large as the new five stroke, it's safe to say this could change the future of automobiles.

Source : Autocar

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Fight H1N1

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