How Do Astronauts Shit in Space?
A ton of space-related news dominates the headlines right now. Billionaires are in the space race, celebrities are flying rockets, and the government has just declassified 1,500 pages of UFO reports. The era of space tourism may soon come, but the era of space curiosity is already well established. Whether you find yourself on a tourist rocket, living in a space station à la Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century , or just reading about space events while in relative comfort on Earth, you probably already have a lot of questions. . You can start by asking: how exactly do they go to the bathroom upstairs?
Thinking about it may seem shoddy or immature when the idea of space exploration is so complicated and – given the way the climate catastrophe is going – even vital, but we think it’s perfectly reasonable. Here is your answer.
What is the main barrier to traditional space bathroom use?
At the heart of this question lies gravity, more precisely, its absence there, in space. The concept of gravity is simple, which we all know and understand: there is a force that pulls objects to the Earth. This is physics. We all understood.
In space, where there is less gravity, you float. Everything floats. Anything not anchored to the surface will be suspended, which is why we see videos of astronauts zipping themselves into little contraption sleeping bags when it’s time for a nap. Dr. Tanya Harrison , a planetary scientist, told Lifehacker that on the space station, astronauts exist in “microgravity”. They are still close enough to Earth to have little gravity, but they are essentially always in a “falling” state. (Interestingly, she said, although their urine mostly “floats” inside their bladders, astronauts have reported that the sensation of needing to go to the toilet remains the same under these conditions.)
It follows that excrement also floats, which sounds terrible. At the moment, most of the people who go into space are some of the smartest and brightest people on Earth who have trained and studied for years to make big discoveries. It would be undignified – not to mention a distraction – for them to do their brilliant job while a little bit of waste floats by, wouldn’t it? Harrison pointed out that this is exactly what happened during the Apollo 10 mission in 1969. According to the mission’s official transcript, Commander Tom Stafford said, “There’s poop in the air.” As they moved to clean it up, the astronauts on board argued over who the poop belonged to. To this day, the mystery has not been solved.
Astronaut research in this area is also paving the way for space tourism and, perhaps someday, life in space. Of course, it would be hard to convince people to buy a ticket to space if they thought poop would be flying inside the ship, but rest assured that the system has improved since 1969.
So, how do astronauts pee there?
Look, you’re not the first to doubt this. In fact, it was in the minds of some of our greatest thinkers long before we first put a man on the moon. Harrison said she gets asked all the time about how astronauts use the toilet, and “it goes for all ages. Everyone wants to know how it works because it’s something we can all relate to.” This is true: not everyone knows what it means to be an astrophysicist, but everyone knows what it is like to go to the toilet. It is one of the greatest equalizers of life.
Tracey Gregg, an expert in the Department of Planetary Volcanology at the University of Buffalo, published a little clarification last year . She noted that in 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space, he did so in “wet underwear” because mission control told him to just pee in a space suit. Too bad for Shepard, but at least he got super cool fame for the mission. A lot of people go into space these days, so provisions are needed for long-distance flights.
The International Space Station now has a toilet, Gregg said, but it has been redesigned in recent years. The first toilet, released in 2000, was designed for people who could stand to urinate, so anyone without the necessary bodily equipment could hardly use it. We won’t get into sexism here, but we all have time to briefly roll our eyes.
NASA spent $23 million in 2018 to improve the bathroom by creating a custom vacuum system. To do this, use a hose with a funnel at the end. Is it as comfortable as just sitting or standing over a toilet on Earth? We guess it depends on how you feel about convenience, but it’s certainly new.
What about pooping in space?
Pooping is a little different. This $23 million vacuum toilet has a dedicated solid waste feature. In fact, it is very similar to a regular toilet and has a raised seat. There are handrails and footrests throughout the bathroom, so any bathroom visitor who is in space can hold on and not float away during the exile. (Can you imagine?) As soon as the astronaut opens the lid to go about his business, the toilet begins to suck, so nothing can flow back out of the toilet or stink.
“It’s not a glamorous process,” Harrison said. “It’s almost like camping if you’ve ever been camping where you have a pit latrine or something. For what we consider super futuristic in space, the setup is not so futuristic.”
Harrison said the toilet is much smaller than what we’re used to here on Earth and has a small bag in addition to suction. After the astronaut has finished his business, he can close the bag and then, for want of a better word, use a stick to shove it “into this thing that looks like a beer keg” where it waits. be disposed of.
Once upon a time, before these big investments, astronauts relied on hip belts to sit in a sex-oriented toilet. As Gregg notes, “It didn’t work very well and was difficult to keep clean.”
Keep in mind that this issue doesn’t affect people on fast travel as much as it does the space station, which Harrison pointed out is the only place people live in space for extended periods of time right now. When, say, Jeff Bezos or Sir Richard Branson briefly take to the air on their rockets, this is not a cause for concern.
Where does body waste go in space?
If you’ve ever gone camping in a van or used a portable potty at a music festival, you’ve probably wondered where waste goes after it’s been collected. One of the most beautiful things about modern plumbing is that unless you work in industry or something goes wrong in your home, you really never have to think about where the stuff goes when it leaves your body and you wash it off. Ignorance can be bliss.
But, of course, the waste must go somewhere . Rock fans may be aware of the incident called the “Chicago River Incident with the Dave Matthews Band” which took place in 2004 when a DMB tour bus dumped about 800 pounds of waste from its septic tank from the Kinzie Street Bridge onto a Chicago pleasure boat. . River below. To be perfectly clear, there were people on that boat, and those people experienced crappy showers. Here on Earth, there are all sorts of laws related to waste disposal, because it’s dangerous to just dump cisterns into sewers or rivers. RV users, for example, know they need to head to special landfills when it’s time to clean out their septic tanks.
All this says about what is happening in space? There are no rivers to pollute, right? Is the vacuum toilet just dumping waste into the great unknown for creepy aliens to float around forever? The answer is even worse: astronauts’ urine is collected and turned back into clean drinking water. According to Gregg, astronauts even have a saying about this: “Today’s coffee is tomorrow’s coffee.” All in the name of science, baby!
“It really matters to us if we start getting people to live on the Moon or Mars or go on these deep space missions because you can’t take all that water with you so you want to recycle as much as possible,” Harrison said. . . However, she admitted, “Even as a scientist, it puts me off a bit. I would definitely need to overcome this mental hurdle, for example, at the moment it’s just water; but you know where it came from.
As for excrement, although it can be brought to Earth for study, it is usually burned. It is vacuumed into the bags we mentioned, placed in airtight containers along with wipes and gloves, and eventually placed on cargo ships. This happens about once every 10 days, and the duty falls to the “unlucky astronaut that week,” who is tasked with replacing the drum and putting in a new one. The waste is then dumped on Earth and burned up in the upper atmosphere, which is clearly colder than what they did to their Dave Matthews Band bus.