Go cautiously because the world is full of trickery….listen to everyone for even the dull and ignorant have something to say…but trust no one who builds anything for the government and just wait ……, for the proof is in the water purity and the pudding ..low government contract bidders especially….
Did it work on earth ?
Jpl does good work.

I know we need this kind of technology for the future but drinking the filtered pee of 6 people still seems pretty gross… especially if it occasionally breaks down!!

"Damn the water is a little yellow again today!!"

That said, Maxwell's 5-step explaination is a perfect summary

However, as Maxwell Says, it is rough getting it to the space station, and micro-gravity is a whole new regime.

Testing the roughness of delivery was probably done, they can do that in simulators on Earth, however, there is no way of simulating extended periods of "weightlessness" without taking it into space and using it for its intended purpose. It was probably not "economic" to send it into space in an unmanned craft, test it with simulated urine injection, and then return it safely to Earth for analysis.

Please think through the process of testing stuff for space use, before assuming that they did not do their best to cover as many tst cases as practicable!

-Nivag

2. Shake it violently for 10 minutes.

3. Move and install in a microgravity environment.

4. ???

5. Expect it to work just as well as it did when they packed the thing up last month.

…or not.

This is the very reason we practice spaceflight. To discover and learn how to get around all the things that can go wrong.

Considering the importance of waste water recycling in space, its actually not a bad thing that they spend some time repairing this one. Learning how to troubleshoot on the go is an important skill.

disclaimer: I stay out of the "is spaceflight worth it or not?" and the "manned vs. robotic" arguments, and I don't intend to start one here.

This is truly disheartening. My jaw dropped after reading the headline and my heart sank after reading the article. 154 million dollars and it broke after a few days? This will only fuel the arguments against manned spaceflight and maybe spaceflight altogether. If a private company developed a miniaturized version of existing technology for 154 million dollars and it failed for an unknown reason, people would be held accountable and even be fired. I have a suspect the same protocol may not exist at NASA. I was totally surprised a few months ago when I found out this was being installed on ISS – I was shocked that it hadn't been installed from the outset given the cost per mass of bringing things to orbit.

This is truly disappointing. I understand people may have rebuttals: zero-G is more difficult that 1G, things are never perfect no matter how much money/time you spend developing it, etc. But something about this..154 million and they dont even know why. disappointing.