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Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
- ericpauley 7mo agoThoroughly enjoyed reading this, especially the author’s repeated obsession on the door vs. curtain innovation…
- JumpCrisscross 7mo agoThis 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 7mo agoIt is the plumbing, not the porcelain.
- trhway 7mo agoa good attempt at popularization of the issue in Big Bang Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrX3EmdKtRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrX3EmdKtRc
- czbond 7mo agoHaha - I was going to add "so it's a shelf"?
- giantrobot 7mo agoI 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-halen-demand-concert-venues-remove-brown-mms-from-the-menu-180982570/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-hale...
- mmooss 7mo agoI see your point. Out of curiosity: > 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. Would the air filtration / recycling system minimize this risk?
- giantrobot 7mo agoThe air filtration will actually help spread aerosols because air currents will carry them through the cabin before they're captured by a filter. A high power "eliminate aerosols" mode would be one of those infrastructure things that need to be designed (and tested). Even then a single compartment spacecraft like the Orion or Dragon wouldn't have anywhere for the crew to bivouac while some aerosol evacuation mode was active. So you'd want a whole procedure designed around it. Part of the need for the Apollo Constant Wear Garments was to make up for the lack of faculties in the command module and LEM. Such a thing would be impractical for a long duration mission so toilets (and waste disposal in general) need to be a reliably solved problem.
- mmooss 7mo agoGood points. A few hot takes: > The air filtration will actually help spread aerosols because air currents will carry them through the cabin before they're captured by a filter. The toilet facilities could have input / suction into the air filtration system. Maybe wise anyway. > A high power "eliminate aerosols" mode would be one of those infrastructure things that need to be designed (and tested). I expect the technology is mature in industrial settings, though of course that is much different than microgravity and the constrained resources of the spacecraft. Maybe it exists on the space station? That context still seems significantly different. > a single compartment spacecraft like the Orion or Dragon wouldn't have anywhere for the crew to bivouac In their spacesuits, though their exteriors may need decontamination. Maybe they just go outside, though probably not a great idea to have the entire crew outside the spacecraft simultaneously! Maybe in an emergency.
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- joshstrange 7mo agoWhile 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 https://youtu.be/pJQGJmYKWZ0?t=131
- duskwuff 7mo agoIt wasn't actually that far off. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Space_Shuttle_toilet_01.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Space_Shuttle_toilet...
- irishcoffee 7mo agoI always think of Apollo 13 (the movie): oh look, constellation u-rine
- caminanteblanco 7mo agoRelevantly, the Artemis 2 waste management system was non functional for a bit: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/02/artemis-ii-flight-update-crew-and-ground-teams-successfully-troubleshoot-orions-toilet/ https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/02/artemis-ii-fl...
- Alupis 7mo agoListening 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 the language NASA and the astronauts used to communicate absolutely hilarious - "Yes, we're excited and eager to begin immediate fluid disposal!" Glad they got it working - best of luck to Atemis II mission!
- RataNova 7mo agoNothing says "this is real engineering" like discovering that even the bathroom has a dedicated expert and a troubleshooting playbook
- whackernews 7mo agoI love this. No matter what we do and how far we push the limits of humanity, we still have to shit.
- api 7mo agoThe second law of thermodynamics dictates that everything poops. Anything alive that is using energy and doing work and transforming matter must poop in some form or another. We don’t know what form life out there might take, but we know it poops. Even post biological machine life would poop in the form of industrial waste, waste heat, etc. Even near perfect recycling can only be near perfect, not perfect, due to the second law, which means a super efficient organism or closed cycle ecosystem or industry will still poop. Just not much. It will also emit a ton of waste heat, which I guess is kind of poop since mass and energy are ultimately equivalent. If there’s weird life out there made of plasma or something, it poops. Probably charged particles or something. The monolith in 2001? It poops. Somehow.
- NooneAtAll3 7mo agocan't you have life that dies before it poops? "death before dishonor" xD
- faster 7mo agoI 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.
- gcanyon 7mo agoThey 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?
- themafia 7mo ago> Early toilets on both the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) used this vacuum system For 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.
- 0x38B 7mo agoMore 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/19760005603.pdf* https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760005603/downloads/19...
- pbhjpbhj 7mo agoDid they not have the astronauts simulate the mission beforehand, on Earth? Wear the clothing, eat the meals, use the toilet, etc? It sounds like that would have allowed them to fix the suit before they went? They must have eaten the meals and such to be sure they could function, make sure they didn't have any intolerance, for example?
- malfist 7mo agoHow do you simulate zero gravity on earth?
- furyofantares 7mo agoI just tuned into the NASA 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"
- ricardobeat 7mo agoA thought: is the ejected space poop going to continue to travel in space at 15000km/h and eventually drop into the sun, or will it also be captured by gravity and land on the moon?
- FartinMowler 7mo agoFinally, some deshitification news on HN!
- clutter55561 7mo agoVery good. Great name as well.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoAccording to science, the detritivore always prefer a polished turd. =3
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- azalemeth 7mo agoToileting 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Absorbency_Garment)
- amelius 7mo ago> separation of solid and liquid excreta this invention might be of use in livestock farming.
- OJFord 7mo agoGP is saying that was previously required, not that it was invented. The new one can handle the mixture; not necessarily (presumably not?) by separating it.
- bluGill 7mo agoLivestock farmers have been doing this for decades. However they have very different constraints. It doesn't matter if a little of one gets mixed with the other - in fact they need enough water in the solids for proper decomposition. Both are normally pumped as well, so the solids are generally expected to be more a viscous liquid than actual solids. They don't want too much water in some stages, but they have plenty of room for a large setteling tank (read gravity works for them). They are also dealing with far more waste than a space mission, so they need something that is efficient/cheap at quantity.
- asdff 7mo agoCentrifuge would separate that stool and urine
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- detourdog 7mo agoOne of the good laughs I had watching 2001 was Haywood reading the instructions for the toilet. The joke being we have evolved to the point that our most basic human functions has become complex. https://sites.google.com/site/theageofplastic3d/2001s-zero-gravity-toilet-sign-and-its-typography https://sites.google.com/site/theageofplastic3d/2001s-zero-g...
- idatum 7mo agoHaywood reads anxiously! Memorable scene.
- detourdog 7mo agoHigh stakes situation:)
- golem14 7mo agoCool article, nice sleuthing. Could be straight out of the “Typeset in the Future” book!
- kodablah 7mo agoIt is also in that book, page 36/37, with transcription and minor note on issues with ISS toilets in 2008.
- fredgrott 7mo agoand here I though they were talking about MS products....my bad...
- beloch 7mo agoReduced need for waste disposal is one of the mixed blessings of a steady diet of MRE's (sometimes called "Meals Refusing to Exit"). It's sobering to realize that anyone who has ever set foot on the moon was most likely backed up in a bad way when they stepped out of their LEM.
- convexly 7mo agoAll the advanced engineering in the world and you still need to figure out how a toilet works in zero gravity.
- stickfigure 7mo agoGreat, but robots don't poop.
- fwipsy 7mo agoIt's so ironic reading about all of the Orion heat shield engineering problems but at least they have a groundbreaking new toilet!!
- spiderice 7mo agoYes they pulled engineers off the heat shield to engineer the toilet. That is totally how it works.
- fwipsy 7mo agoAre you sure? I wouldn't have thought the skills would be transferable. I don't mean to judge, but I think if your toilet needs heat shield engineers, maybe you should see your doctor.
- NetMageSCW 7mo agoI wish there had been some comparison to how the Dragon toilet works.
- yanko 7mo agoThere is interesting exact timing for (first attempt for sure) the noise of getting humans round trip around the moon, that space toilet discussion and the shitty situation with aircraft carriers in failed war with Iran.
- lorenzohess 7mo agoAnd people say there's no innovation in the Artemis stack
- shiroiuma 7mo agoFrom what I've read, the crew capsule really is all-new and very different from previous NASA capsules. However the engines and other launch stuff is just reused old stuff or a little modernized (SRS main engines + SRBs).
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> the engines and other launch stuff is just reused old stuff or a little modernized (SRS main engines + SRBs) Which is good enough. The breakthrough propulsion is happening for Artemis III at the SpaceX and Blue Origin shipyards.
- agency 7mo agoI can't believe no one has brought up the legendary Apollo 10 "turd incident" https://archive.ph/J61jD https://archive.ph/J61jD
- nosrepa 7mo agoProbably since the article specifically mentions it!
- throwfku 7mo agoA lot of Americans don't have toilets but elite needs toilet for moon.
- squibonpig 7mo agoAstronauts aren't exactly the elite honestly. The elite would rather the money went to oil companies or something.
- nephihaha 7mo agoGiven the fact that humans haven't officially been there in my entire lifetime (and I'm no spring chicken) it's not been a priority.
- cubefox 7mo agoWhat a frustrating article. It contains a lot of unimportant chitchat but basically no information on how the toilet actually works.
- acyou 7mo agoUh oh, that toilet looks pretty heavy, how much does that thing weigh? Will the extra weight be worth it during reentry? Or will the crew push the whole thing out the airlock on the way home? I wondered why the Artemis crew module weighs twice as much as the Apollo module after 60 years of scientific progress and developments in materials science and aerospace engineering, now I am starting to understand. Plastic bags "worked", not great but they are super light, essentially you are not going to get much lighter than a plastic bag for containing and disposing of waste. On the other hand, that toilet looks insanely overbuilt, how strong do you need the seat to be?? Maybe they can position the astronauts behind it for use as a last-ditch heat shield. This story reminds be of the tale where during the space race the Americans created a super space pen that works in zero degrees kelvin and vacuum, and the Russians used a pencil.
- Feathercrown 7mo agoCorrect me if I'm mistaken, but weren't pencils ruled out by NASA because of the dust they create when they write? The toilet engineering could be a similar situation. These people are professionals, we should not assume they built it like this for no reason.
- imtringued 7mo agoThe dust while writing doesn't matter. You can still write with a rounded tip. The problem is sharpening the pencil.
- manarth 7mo agoMy secondary school physics teacher was somewhat accommodating to "interesting" experiments - those which might look cool to teenagers whilst also providing a lesson in physics. One of those was attaching electrical probes to each end of a pencil, and applying an electrical current. Graphite conducts extremely well: the pencil "lead" (actually graphite) heats up, glowing a bright orange colour, whilst setting fire to the wooden pencil surrounds. If you snap the graphite "lead", you can touch the two ends together causing a bright electrical arc. It's a great physics demonstration, and graphite conductivity is the reason pencils aren't used in zero-gravity environments.
- throwpppp 7mo agoMillions of homeless don't have access to a normal toilet. Well done america
- khazhoux 7mo agoWhen you gotta boldly go, you gotta boldly go!
- sparshselim 7mo agoi had a realisation reading this story, the NASA report and the apollo transcripts. very often i use the shorthand, "oh but this is not rocket science" & "if we can go to the moon, this is easy stuff." i think this same approach led to us designing thermodynamically & aeronautically elegant machines, but completing screwing up something as basic as a toilet. toilets are as important as rockets. and oftentimes because they're unsexy, more difficult to solve for. after all, i remember neil armstrong, but not the person who made this modern amenity in my own household. what a wild rabbit hole
- joecool1029 7mo agoI couldn't stop thinking about the complicated U-boat toilet to allow discharging waste while submerged. One set off a chain of events that lead to its ship's demise. Someone decided to use it without consulting the toilet technician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1206 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1206
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- smrt 7mo ago(It’s interesting, there’s no mention of AI in this thread anywhere)
- vova_hn2 7mo agoI remember some old sci-fi book or short story (don't remember which one) that had a spaceship with a separate spinning section specifically for a toilet. You would enter it, activate it, wait until it accelerated to a certain RPM, do the thing, then deactivate it and it would decelerate until it is stationary relative to the rest of the ship again. I wonder, how expensive it would be to build this for real. The rotation mechanism could use a flywheel. Let's say, an electric motor spins the toilet section and the flywheel in opposite directions. So that the rest of the ship is not disturbed. Size and weight are obviously issues, I just wonder how much would be the overhead. I wonder if the real spaceship designers considered this possibility.
- gcanyon 7mo agoEvery time early astronaut relief comes up (it's come up two or three times, which is more nickels than I would have expected) I see this line: > being able to pee and poop simultaneously ... and I know that I could never have been an astronaut. There are many other reasons, but the ability to hold one while doing the other... yeah, I'm out.
- RataNova 7mo agoA good reminder that standardization matters
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoHad to laugh: "Artemis II’s toilet is a moon mission milestone" and the first photo has a sign "Lets Go!" in front of Artemis.
- felipellrocha 7mo agoHoward?! Is that you?!
- ronb1964 7mo ago[dead]
- cringleyrobert 7mo agoHoooooowwwwwward!!
- alexandrehtrb 7mo agoFun fact: during the development of The Sims 1, the first object created was the toilet.
- gregman1 7mo agoAaand it’s gone https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/04/science/artemis-2-toilet-malfunction https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/04/science/artemis-2-toilet-malf...