Discussion
Artemis II’s toilet is a moon mission milestone
joshstrange: While space has always interested me quite a bit, I've never looked into the toilet situation and I had this scene [0] from an unrealistic kids movie firmly fixed in my brain as "this is how they use the restroom in space, or something better since that movie is old".[0] https://youtu.be/pJQGJmYKWZ0?t=131
duskwuff: [delayed]
JumpCrisscross: This is one of those stupid, unglamorous works that legitimately facilitates long-term space exploration ambitions in a way just focusing on the sexy bits, e.g. propulsion.
mememememememo: It is the plumbing, not the porcelain.
Alupis: Listening to the live stream yesterday evening - they performed a significant amount of troubleshooting for the toilet. This required consulting with a full team of experts, including a "Toilet Lead". It seems it wasn't "flushing" waste into the collection bag or something similar - but they were eventually able to get it working.I found it hilarious the language NASA and the astronauts used to communicate - "Yes, we're excited and eager to begin immediate disposal of fluids" and similar.Glad they got it working - best of luck to Atemis II mission!
faster: I worked on the shuttle for a summer a long time ago, and my group's admin was obsessed with the toilet plumbing so she had engineers stopping by with specs and diagrams a few times per week. True story: there was a component in the liquid waste system called the "last drop pinch tube". She laughed about that for weeks.
themafia: > Early toilets on both the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) used this vacuum systemFor liquid waste. This was not exactly the case for solid waste. Effectively it was just a tank. It had something like a "net" in it, this was connected to a shaft, through a gear, to another shaft at the front of the seat. The commander would, every 7 days or so, "actuate the mechanism" to rotate the net and to gather all the waste and compact it into one side of the toilet.Many commanders said this was the most stressful part of the mission as the mechanism was somewhat delicate and could easily break. In that case you had to don a glove and manually do the work the net was otherwise doing.If that completely failed, yes, the shuttle had backup "Apollo bags" stored in the middeck lockers.
gcanyon: They should have trained plumbers to be astronauts instead of training astronauts to be plumbers. (Armageddon reference)But seriously, although I guess it’s fair to say that errors will occur, still: they couldn’t get the plumbing right?
furyofantares: I just tuned into the live stream after this and the first, and only, thing I've heard is "we've had a successful ejection. toilet is go for use"
0x38B: More on what astronauts found “objectionable” and “distasteful” with Apollo's system, from the PDF linked in the OP (1):"In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks. The principal problem with both the urine and fecal collection systems was the fact that these required more manipulation than crewmen were used to in the Earth environment and were, as a consequence, found to be objectionable. The urine receptacle assembly represented an attempt to preclude crew handling of urine specimens but, because urine spills were frequent, the objective of “sanitizing” the process was thwarted. The fecal collection system presented an even more distasteful set of problems. The collection process required a great deal of skill to preclude escape of feces from the collection bag and consequent soiling of the crew, their clothing, or cabin surfaces. The fecal collection process was, moreover, extremely time consuming because of the level of difficulty involved with use of the system. An Apollo 7 astronaut estimated the time required to correctly accomplish the process at 45 minutes.* Good placement of fecal bags was difficult to attain; this was further complicated by the fact that the flap at the back of the constant wear garment created an opening that was too small for easy placement of the bags.* As was noted earlier, kneading of the bags was required for dispersal of the germicide.*Entry in the log of Apollo 7 by Astronaut Walter Cunningham.*The configuration of the constant wear garments on later Apollo missions were modified to correct this problem."1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760005603/downloads/19...
azalemeth: Toileting is really fecking important. As someone with a spinal injury you really don't realise just how important until it goes wrong.Apparently one of the down sides about the previous system was that the separation of solid and liquid excreta ideally required someone to separate their excretion of both kinds. Apparently this is something that male astronauts found much much easier than female ones. Artemis's toilet can handle both at the same time.I still think they have the good old fashioned Maximum Absorbency Garment for space walks though. (CF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Absorbency_Garment)
trhway: good attempt at popularization of the issuehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrX3EmdKtRc
amelius: > separation of solid and liquid excretathis invention might be of use in livestock farming.
giantrobot: I gauge the seriousness of all manned space exploration proposals by the attention paid to the toilets. If the toilets are not a solved problem with many nines of reliability, you're just writing science function and are not at all serious about actual manned space exploration. Toilets are the brown M&M clause[0] of manned spaceflight proposals.Toilets are unglamorous in the extreme but absolutely vital. Humans make hazardous and potentially deadly waste. Every day. It needs to be safely discarded/contained. In a sealed environment in microgravity it's even more dangerous than it is on Earth.Aerosolized fecal matter can enter the lungs and cause deadly infections. Entering the digestive system can cause debilitating (possibly deadly) illness. Temporary blindness if it gets in the eyes. It can also cause mechanical or electrical problems if it gets in equipment. All of these can lead to a mission failure and in extreme instances a total loss of the crew. Apollo 8 was extremely lucky that Frank Borman's illness didn't cause more problems.If you're not thinking logistics and infrastructure you're not really serious about an endeavor.[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-hale...
