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But perhaps "pleasure" isn't the right word. You see, as Roach points out, travelling into space forces those invovled to push the boundaries -- not only of engineering, of what's possible, but also of what's socially acceptable, of what's tolerable.
And now that I know... I need to share.
Everybody knows that the toilets of NASA are to be loathed (the butt of the whole program, so to speak), but what's actually so terrible about them? Well, for one thing, NASA missions didn't even invent a toilet for their astronauts until the 1970s. The Apollo and Gemini missions simply didn't have them.
There wasn't any room in the shuttle. Roach says that the Apollo 13 capsule had about as much cubic feet of space for the three-man crew as a sports car. There were no bathrooms. They used plastic bags to dispose of solid waste.
Are you ready to know what scenes didn't make it into the final cut of Apollo 13 (1995)?
Astronauts would hold the bags in place on their bottoms (part of their training back on Earth was to learn how to position the bags with the aid of an in-toilet camera), spread the cheeks manually (unless they figured out how to squat in zero gravity), and catch the offending matter in the bag. This act in itself is difficult, as the first astronauts soon learned that egesta tends to curl (backwards, if you care to know) in zero gravity.
"Egesta" means exactly what you think it means. It's the opposite of "ingesta." You'll learn a lot of euphemisms for "poop" by the end of this post.
Escaped turds are not unknown in the history of NASA. It's all there in the mission transcripts, which are freely available to the public thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. At least one conversation with Houston was interrupted when the crew suddenly noticed an offending bolus hurtling across the cabin.
The crew first briefly discussed whose it might be before laughing hysterically and finally bagging it.
Astronauts: tougher in more ways than just guts.
And that's not the end of the ordeal. You can't just seal the bag and stow it away. If bacteria are allowed to do their work inside the bag, it will expand and explode within a few days, due to the gasses that bacteria produce. Astronauts had to disperse an antibacterial powder into the bag (not easy in zero gravity) and then knead it throughout the material. If you happened to be in the middle of a docking procedure, or some other priority assignment, you had to hand it off to another crewmember to do (in what Roach calls a "true test of friendship").
And then NASA invented the zero-gravity toilet, which only made things worse.
First, there was the toilet with the spinning blades (operating just six inches below the rim) that would first chop up an astronaut's deposits and then freeze-dry the offending material to the inside walls of the bowl.
Sounds safe and sanitary, right? Only until you turn the blades on a second time. The freeze-dried dung would then shatter and be dispersed throughout the cabin in a cloud of what must be called "fecal dust."
What NASA finally settled on (and, as far as I can tell, is still in use today) is a fitted suction-tube which -- you guessed it -- generates about as many problems as it solves. The worst-case scenario is a clog in the air-filter, which must then be cleaned by -- you guessed it -- whoever used it last.
Disposing of urine, in case you're wondering, is a walk in the park compared to the multiple problems presented by the disposal of solid waste. Urine is either deposited directly into a condom-like catheter fitted directly over the penis or, in the case of women (and the men who prefer it), a diaper.
As you might imagine, most astronauts who are launched on short-term missions simply hold it all in (we're back to solid waste now). NASA has tried liquid and pill diets, but neither worked well. NASA has also tried feeding its astronauts a diet rich in highly-processed foods, the effect of which is to constipate their astronauts for the duration of a mission.
I get the impression that few complain.
Storing bowel movements after they've passed is another problem. It's enough of a problem that one NASA scientist proposed they hydrolize solid waste back into (tasteless, perfectly sanitary) carbon and stored as edible patties.
In a line that I desperately hope is a direct quote, and not a fabrication of Roach's, one of the astronauts present exclaimed "We're not eating shit burgers on the way back from Mars!"
See, the reason I mention any of this is because I think space-travel is important, and what to do about doody is just one of the incredible challenges that engineers and astronauts face in the trek to outer space. It's just as daunting a problem as designing any landing-system or executing parabolic course-corrections from twenty million miles away, and yet it receives far less press.
Anyway, that's the reason I'm writing a post about poop. Because NASA is populated by heroes, and sometimes, being a hero stinks.
One final anecdote: NASA has done well to figure out which foods are the most readily-absorbed by the body. Animal fat and protein is one of the most readily-metabolized foods. A ten ounce steak will produce only one ounce of solid waste, an absorption-rate of 90%. Hard-boiled eggs have an even higher absorption-rate.
This is why the traditional pre-launch astronaut meal is steak and eggs. They'll be sitting in the cockpit for eight hours straight with nowhere to go, and, as Roach puts it, "you don't want to be eating FiberOne on launch-day."
The traditional Russian pre-launch breakfast, it should be noted, is not steak and eggs, but rather a one-liter enema.
I apologize for what I just put you through, dear reader. To make it up to you, I promise to deliver a post on sex in space for the next Topical Tuesday.
--Serge
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