How do Astronauts Pee and Poop in Space? NASA Astronaut Reveals The Misery of Spaceship Toilets
The bathroom facilities up there are miserable. Given the zero gravity situation, the toilet in space is discomforting.
Living in space or at least visiting the outer surface of the universe may be on the dream list of many. But residing in the International Space Station is no piece of cake. All your comfort swings in the gravity, to say the least. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson has spent 655 days floating in the space and she has tears now when she says she will not go back up there. The bathroom facilities up there are miserable. Peeing and pooping is a problem, given the zero gravity situation, the spaceship toilets are discomforting.
Whitson has spent more days in space than any other American and she put her both feet on the ground a week ago, on May 22, 2018. While she enjoyed her work of installing battery parts on the station's solar panels and sampling of mysterious space microbes, the sanitation got her tears. She called her stay a more of a 'camping trip than a hotel stay.' The toilet on the ISS is a Russian-built system costing $19,000, not really a first-class facility. The toilets in space turn the human urine into potable water. Astronauts have to use a funnel, equipped with a fan that suctions the urine so that it does not float away. It takes about a week for the pee to become water again for the astronauts to use.
Whitson however, says for pooping the toilet usage gets difficult. "Number two... is more challenging because you're trying to hit a pretty small target," she said. The members in the ISS go to the bathroom into a little plate-sized hole on top of that silver can. The fan vacuum-sucks the excrement away. The poop is then sealed into a plastic bag to be treated in the next space trash day. "After it starts getting full," Whitson said with a grimace, "you have to put a rubber glove on and pack it down."
Check out the video of the International Space Station's Toilet Tour:
There are times when the whole process goes awry or maybe the toilet stops functioning properly and then the toilet waste does come back and floats around in the space station. Yes, it tends to get that miserable. All the waste is eventually blasted off on a cargo-ship which will just burn on its way down to the atmosphere. Urination is relatively easy as about 80% of it gets completely recycled and the rest becomes waste. On some missions, astronauts have to use the Maximum Absorbency Garment diapers, which too aren't very first class. So the natural process of excretion is very challenging and gets tough while one is up in space.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 28, 2018 04:08 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).