{"id":703,"date":"2006-10-10T10:05:36","date_gmt":"2006-10-10T10:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=703"},"modified":"2006-10-10T10:05:36","modified_gmt":"2006-10-10T10:05:36","slug":"life_imitates_star_wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/10\/10\/life_imitates_star_wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Imitates Star Wars&#8230; Coooooooool!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/Luke-Treadwell-vaporator.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tatooine vaporator\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/Luke-Treadwell-vaporator-thumb.jpg\" width=\"149\" height=\"251\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Any <i>Star Wars<\/i> fan worth his shipment of spice will, of course, recognize the tall, white object in the photo above: it&#8217;s a moisture vaporator, a marvelous machine that pulls fresh water out of the very air and enables human life to survive on the desert planet Tatooine. Nifty idea, but it&#8217;s just science fiction, right?<\/p>\n<p>Apparently not&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/\">Wired.com<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/technology\/0,71898-0.html\">reporting<\/a> that a company called <a href=\"http:\/\/aquasciences.com\/\">Aqua Sciences<\/a> has developed a machine that does exactly what Uncle Owen&#8217;s condensor units supposedly did, and cheaply to boot (about 25 cents to the gallon, according to the company&#8217;s website). Naturally, the first customer is the Pentagon, which has long sought a way to keep U.S. troops easily supplied with a sustainable water source while operating in arid places like Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>The company spokesman quoted in the article is coy about how the thing works &#8212; it&#8217;s apparently got something to do with salt &#8212; but the gadget is described as a &#8220;20-foot machine [that] can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts.&#8221; In addition, the machine is <i>not<\/i> dependent on humidity, like other types of condensation-type technology. Very cool&#8230; the only thing I find disappointing is that the actual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aquasciences.com\/products.html\">units<\/a> look more like ordinary reefer trailers than anything Luke Skywalker ever tinkered with. Ah, well&#8230; that&#8217;s the curse of being a science-fiction fan, I guess: nothing ever looks as cool when it&#8217;s finally invented for real as it did when it was imagined in the movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any Star Wars fan worth his shipment of spice will, of course, recognize the tall, white object in the photo above: it&#8217;s a moisture vaporator, a marvelous machine that pulls fresh water out of the very air and enables human life to survive on the desert planet Tatooine. Nifty idea, but it&#8217;s just science fiction, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esoterica","category-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}