Sometime in the early 1990s, University of Arizona microbiologist Chuck Gerba was invited to a Martian strategy workshop whose topics included solid-waste management. Gerba told me that he recalls one of the chemists saying, “Shoot, what we could do is hydrolyze the stuff back to carbon and make patties out of it.” Whereupon the astronauts in attendance went, “We are not eating shit burgers on the way back.”
