Could water-recycling suits help future astronauts survive on Mars?

It’s one of the most well-known pieces of speculative technology in science fiction: the Stillsuit.

As an essential feature of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the Stillsuit is the body-fluid recycling full-body suit worn by the Fremen of Arrakis, a technological adaptation to a desert world with almost no water but home to an extremely valuable resource that leads to human colonization of the barren planet.

While there isn’t any of the spice melange on Mars (at least none that we know of), Dune’s Arrakis has some very strong parallels to the red planet just down the way from us, and some important lessons to teach about survival in such an unforgiving environment.

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