Is Human Poop the Ultimate Rocket Fuel? Madhee Moseman. P6

Human waste has been a hassle for spaceflight since the dawn of the space age. …..The technique of doing a number 2 in microgravity has come a long way from the complex task of "pooping in a bag" during the Apollo era, but space agencies are still lumbered with the unenviable task of storing human waste and returning it to Earth for safe disposal during a fiery reentry.Now, researchers from the University of Florida have been asked by NASA to turn the ‘human waste problem’ into an invaluable resource for the future of space exploration. But what use could poop possibly have in space? Well, it could be turned into rocket fuel and the potential spin-offs could transform how we use human waste on Earth, too. in 2006, when NASA was planning to set up a long-duration presence on the moon’s surface by 2024, the agency wanted to find a way of reducing the launch weight of a mission from Earth and, in the process, to find something useful for the solid waste to do. Launching all that waste off the surface to return it to Earth seemed silly and disposing it in some secluded lunar crater was not an option.NASA sent the researchers a pre-packaged form of chemically-produced human waste that also included simulated food waste, towels, washcloths, clothing and packing material, according to a university press release. Then they got to work in an effort to see how much methane they could produce. “The idea was to see whether we could make enough fuel to launch rockets and not carry all the fuel and its weight from Earth for the return journey. Methane can be used to fuel the rockets. Enough methane can be produced to come back from the moon.” Recently the astonishing discovery that the laboratory process could extract 290 liters of methane from each crewmember of a hypothetical lunar astronaut per day

.http://news.discovery.com/space/is-human-poop-the-ultimate-rocket-fuel-141208.htm

Well shit has been looked at as a positive to NASA, this is a very interesting finding they have discovered. Is this something that will benefit us majorly due to the disposal and use of poop?