[manatee]

Anyone need a science project? Try scaling this zero-power-using passive watermaker/water collector to a size suitable for camping and boating. Considering how soggy some mornings are, a couple of five-footers in your rigging overnight at the anchorage could be real productive. Knowing how to make one may be a good thing to have in your sneaky-tricks bag for when your watermaker packs it in on that slow slog through the doldrums.

This Tower Pulls Drinking Water Out of Thin Air | Innovation | Smithsonian

 

[bobmcgov]

Pifff. The Fremen of Arrakis had that tech years ago. Years hence? Anyhow. Total 'prior art' thing. I want foulies with some of them heel pumps and a drinking tube -- sweat/urine recycling as an alternative to RO watermakers.

 

[sharkbait]

1

 

[manatee]

Pifff. The Fremen of Arrakis had that tech years ago. Years hence? Anyhow. Total 'prior art' thing. I want foulies with some of them heel pumps and a drinking tube -- sweat/urine recycling as an alternative to RO watermakers.

Isn't it interesting how many zany ideas in science fiction have become facts of life?

Submarines -- Jules Verne
Travel to the Moon -- Lucian of Samosata, Cyrano de Bergerac, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne
Television -- Buck Rogers,- or was it Flash Gordon? -- maybe both, & more besides.
Communication Satellites -- Arthur C. Clarke
Tablet computers -- Isaac Asimov
hand-held portable Communicators -- Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek", among others.
.....and the list goes on.....

Yep, we Trekkies, Trekkers & science fiction fans are just wild-eyed dreamers with our heads in the clouds. Stillsuits may be a ways off, but I'd bet someone somewhere is working on the idea.

 

[msmith10]

Isn't it interesting how many zany ideas in science fiction have become facts of life?

That's true, but I won't be satisfied until I have my flying car and jet backpack.

 

[krisscross]

Already in use in Africa: This Tower Pulls Drinking Water Out of Thin Air

 

[capt vimes]

Such applications (small emergency solar-powered-water-distilling-stuff now) have been around for some decades - mainly for the military...
Just read through steven callahans story "adrift: 76 days lost at sea" - he had two of such water makers with him in the raft...
Sadly, they have been forgotten or just neglected because no one realy needs them apart from the military probably...
I know that we've been issued some small hand powered reverse osmosis type water makers when i did my tour of duty in tajikistan... Awfully exhausting to operate and the water just trickled out of the nozzle...
Nevertheless, there are some applications and projects out there:
SEA Panel
Skydrops - Water Collecting Balloon System by Guilherme Rodrigues & Murilo Gomes » Yanko Design

 

[Rhapsody-NS27]

I want foulies with some of them heel pumps and a drinking tube -- sweat/urine recycling as an alternative to RO watermakers.

Stillsuits may be a ways off, but I'd bet someone somewhere is working on the idea.

Reminds me of the movies (and book) of Dune and Children of Dune. I'm sure if sci-fi thought of something, someone else is out there trying to make it reality.