Urea Bioreactor Electrochemical (UBE) system uses urine to make fuel for spaceships

DOC Brown from the Back to the Future movies would be proud. A new invention creates spaceship fuel from a simple and plentiful source.

Future realised ... Jennifer and Marty look in wonder at Doc Brown’s ‘Mr Fusion’ device f

THE Back to the Future movies presupposed all kinds of great inventions for the year 2015, and one of the coolest has been developed with just a year to spare.

No, not the hoverboard.

The Urea Bioreactor Electrochemical (UBE) system is the closest thing we have yet to the “Mr Fusion” Home Energy Reactor, which Doc Brown affixed to his DeLorean time machine after his first visit to 2015.

That device converted household wastes into nuclear fuel, and its real-world equivalent has been developed by bioengineers at NASA and the University of Puerto Rico.

They have developed a system whereby human urine is separated into drinking water and urea, which is used to power a fuel cell.

The website Mysterious Universe reported that the UBE system could be used on Earth, and in space, where storage and disposal of human waste is a major challenge.

The UBE converted about 86 per cent of the urea into ammonia, the report stated.

As the movie Apollo 13 showed, human waste used to be jettisoned in outer space, but this practice was discontinued once it was discovered that frozen waste particles could damage space vehicles.